Why Your Pizza May Never Be Delivered By Drone

What happens if you drop them?

For years, technology companies such as Amazon, Alphabet and Uber have promised us that unmanned aircraft will deliver products to our doors in minutes. So, why do they take so long to arrive?

One word: regulation.

If our skies are as crowded as our streets, the airspace rules need to be updated to avoid accidents, terrorist attacks and related problems, such as noise pollution.

But it's easier said than done. Here is a summary of the main issues.

Nuisances noisy?

According to a recent NASA study, the noise generated by road traffic was "consistently judged to be less of a nuisance" than the intense buzz produced by drones.

The people of Bonython's Australian suburb of Canberra had the same thought when Wing, the Google-owned Alphabet unmanned airline, started testing fast food delivery there.

"With the windows closed, even with the double glazing, you can hear the drones," said a local resident at News.

Therefore, noise abatement is an important consideration for regulators, many of whom have banned drone deliveries after dark, just when many hungry people would like to receive this food.

"Noise pollution has been a topic of debate in the development of new European standards," says Yves Morier of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

Thieves Drones

Even with relatively few drones in the sky, the number of potentially dangerous incidents is extremely high.

Last month, a "closed" drone shut down Wellington Airport in New Zealand, while a user of a drone in the UK was accused of endangering people's lives by flying too close to a police helicopter.

And Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said he had recently been "attacked" by drone.

Regulators are trying to regain control by implementing registration systems.


"The vision is unified, digitized traffic management at all levels, from local to national to international," said Benoît Curdy, Secretary General of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management Association. GUTMA), in September.

"Registration is the first step, because it allows authorities to know who is flying."

European regulators are also concerned.

"The use of unmanned aircraft is a major concern for us," said Morier of EASA.

"We can not reduce the risk to zero, but we can take steps to limit it, including making registration mandatory for drones weighing more than 250 g."

Are you safe?

Delivery drones will quickly fall in bad taste if they fall quickly from the sky after running out of juice or crashing.

In October, the West Midlands Police reported a defect in their DJI Matrix 200 surveillance aircraft to the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority. The drone suffered a sudden loss of energy even when the battery remained charged.

Alphabet says their delivery planes are safe.

"The main challenge is to reduce the risk of collision between unmanned aircraft and other aircraft," Morier said.

Wing says he has done "tens of thousands of test flights" in the United States and Australia, before traveling to Finland next year.

Their drones use "redundant engines, batteries and navigation systems with intelligent controls, which allows the emergency systems to protect aircraft in flight," the company said.

But flights beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS), where drones travel autonomously or are remotely controlled by pilots, will only be viable once regulators have approved the "detect and avoid" technology.

"NASA has built and successfully piloted a system this year," says the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). "But no" detect and avoid "system has yet been approved."

This is a point reiterated by the European regulators.

"There is no" detect and avoid "technology that can guarantee [that drones do not collide with other aircraft] at the moment," Morier said.

For this reason, it has been stipulated that non-commercial drones can not fly more than 120 m (394 ft), although control of it poses another problem.

Lack of rules

Most countries now have, or will soon have, established rules for small UAVs capable of monitoring or making deliveries. And the biggest taxis in the sky are also developing.

"Some companies are already testing large-scale prototypes of unmanned aerial vehicles," says the FAA. "The rapid pace of change fundamentally changes the role of the regulator."

But the rules on the mode and place of flight of drones differ greatly from one country to another.

In the United States, FAA rules state that delivery-type drones must weigh less than 25 kg (55 pounds) in total and fly only up to 123 meters (400 feet).

According to Susanne Schödel, the integration of drones in airspace is "a very complex task"

In Saudi Arabia, all drones are forbidden.

Although more than 50 countries belong to joint authorities for the regulation of unmanned systems (JARUS), a final set of standards has not yet been agreed.

Susanne Schödel, general secretary of the FAI, the world federation of air sports, said: "The authorities are working on a global scale, but the integration of drones in airspace is a very complex task."

A widely accepted standard is that drones, at least initially, will only operate in lower airspace, leaving the highest airspace free for commercial aircraft.

Where are we now?

Developed for the first time for military purposes during the First World War, drones are now a global industry in which the investment bank Goldman Sachs expects a $ 100 billion worth by 2020.

In Switzerland, Swiss Post's postal services have started to use unmanned aircraft to transport laboratory samples between hospitals in Lugano and Bern.

Drone deliveries make sense for remote areas, but can cause problems in the city

In China, e-commerce giant JD.com has been shipping drone parcels in some rural areas since last year.

And residents of a remote First Nations island in northern Ontario, Canada, will begin receiving goods by drone in 2019.

Its commercial potential is already exploited in many parts of the world, although on an experimental basis.

Other concerns

Critics say that video drones also pose a threat to privacy and threaten birds and other users in the lower airspace.

"We are concerned that users of recreational airspace, such as paragliding pilots and hot-air balloons, have less freedom," said Schödel.

Therefore, if you expect an unmanned airplane to deliver your pizza in the short term, you will probably be hungry.