The US estimates some 50,000 drones in the skies over the next decade, closer to home here in the UK experts estimate numbers of up to 10,000! This blog post looks at the future of RPAS and Drones about our skies, what are these thousands of drones doing in our sky?

Most will have seen the Amazon Drone post recently but what started as a marketing gimmick has actually got people thinking, could this ever be a reality? In fact amazon are now seriously researching the idea and DHL have even tested it. This post explores some of the hurdles that would need to be overcome before you see drones buzzing above your head.

Battery life is a major factor for drones, endurance for multi rotors ranges from 5 minutes all the way up to 30 minutes. Assuming the latter, once you've added on a weighty package with additional wind resistance, you’re looking at more like 20 minutes. Now consider speed and what distance a drone could cover in that time, assuming a generous and consistent ground speed of 15 mph for 20 minutes and drone can go 5 miles. But wait...it needs to get there and back in that time as well so it's more like 2.5 miles. Do you live within 2.5 miles of an Amazon Factory, thought not!

But let's assume you do live within 2.5 miles The next issue here is size and weight. Drones can produce only a limited amount of lift, the opposite acting force to lift is weight. So the size and power of drone is directly proportional to the amount of weight it could lift. If we assume these amazon style drones are of a similar size to a DJI S1000, these could lift packages of several kilgrams but if they were smaller (and I think they will be) such as F550 then weight will be limited to only a 1-2 kg. This certainly cuts a lot of products out of the drone delivery option!

How about Security, what's stopping you from snatching one of these drones as they come in to land in your neighbours back garden? Who will know? There could even be issues with packages getting into the wrong hands due to 'navigation problems', after-all GPS is designed to be erroneous and the US can at any point in time shut it down, what happens then? Perhaps a back-up navigation system is needed using the European satellite system.

Safety? Let's face it drones are just fancy bits of flying kit made of hardware and software, what happens when an engine fails or it drops a package mid flight...that's going to hurt it it hits you on the head! Are we all going to be wearing safety helmets in the year 2020?

Finally what about all the other airspace user? 747s, A380's, Cessna's, Helicopters...there are many other airspace users out there so unless some clever detect and avoid technology is developed then segregation is needed from all the other aircraft out there.

It seems to me that before we are going to see this happen we needed further distances, improved endurance, better battery life and a long hard think about the kind of safety and security features these things are going to need. It's definitely not impossible, but it's going to take some work!

Amazon Drone deliveries, fact or fiction?

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