CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
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Drone flight data reveal energy and greenhouse gas emissions savings for very small package delivery
Whilst the paper is about the efficiencies of drone delivery, it's telling that (electric) cargo bikes are the most efficient option!
Robert
Our model shows that an electric quadcopter drone with a very small package (0.5 kg) would consume approximately 0.08 MJ/km and result in 70 g of CO2e per package in the United States. We compare drone delivery with other vehicles and show that energy per package delivered by drones (0.33 MJ/package) can be up to 94% lower than conventional transportation modes, with only electric cargo bicycles providing lower GHGs/package.
Yes - 0.5kg is very small package too. I would argue that mass drone use would be intrusive. Novelty factor will wear off. Larger drones for mail and NHS samples in Hebrides make sense but also mean a loss for Loganair and CalMac (when they have ferry st spare!)
Related article in the guardian today about instant delivery and its social consequences
There's plenty of vids of larger quadcopter drones delivering things much larger than 500g[1]. I assume the energy efficiency of this is considerably worse than other eCargo options. It would be interesting to see the chart of package weight vs energy efficiency.
[1] Mind you most examples I'm acquainted with involve the delivery of 82mm mortar shells onto the roof of Russian armoured vehicles...
Not to go all "crazy mountain-breaded man with an arsenal in his basement", but drone delivery *will* be a thing for the simple reason that it suits governments to have citizens used to the things buzzing around overhead; boil that frog enough and they'll hardly notice the police & security services surveillance models "keeping us safe".
The surveillance ones are already present and flying largely out of visual/audio range. No need to get close with modern optics.
Still need to get closer for modern mics though so being able to slot a few in among the "general traffic" to eavesdrop on people will be invaluable to them, and the polis will love their ones to be visible as "deterrence"(why pay for bobbies on the beat when you can have drones do it, I bet you could even get a taser mount on there, maybe one day there will be bipedal models...waitaminute, I'm sure there was some prescient satirical movie about this kind of thing once...).
Not necessarily that close (assuming a suitable object is nearby):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone
A parabolic would also work but have less range (unless inconveniently large)
Even so, I suspect the Glorious Organs of State Security would find it more convenient to compromise everyone's mobile phone rather than bother with this sort of James Bond stuff for everyday use.
As you say, drones likely to be used for crowd/protest control (accordingly I would expect activist movements to start getting into electronic warfare) and surveilling/shouting at those out and about at night. Much like the police helicopters now (but cheaper and more numerous).
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