‘Come vivere vicino a un elicottero’: residenti stufi dei droni di consegna da asporto che ronzano per le loro case – The Irish Times
https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/dublin/2025/06/02/like-living-near-a-helicopter-residents-fed-up-at-takeaway-delivery-drones-buzzing-over-their-homes/
di WickerMan111
7 commenti
Most surprising thing is drone delivery is viable. Would’ve thought food gets cold or drones get lost.
They are surprisingly noisy when delivering nearby. On weekends especially there are a few houses around us that use them regularly, and yeah when a number of them come in a short period it’s pretty irritating. Other times if it’s just a random one quickly dropping a coffee or whatever you barely notice. But they don’t carry much at all so if they’re bringing dinner for a family you get several in a row. If it’s sunny out and you’re trying to sit in the garden, it’s really not nice at all.
I’m usually a tech head and drone delivery is a little bit sci-fi, but the noise factor is too much – and this is the trial, they want more drones and a larger model that can carry more, which would be presumably louder too. I hadn’t even thought of the poor folks living right by the departure and landing area, that must be a complete pain for them.
The noise has a lot of cut through – it’s not just a low rumble. I was sitting listening to them go over one day and it brought me down a rabbit hole to understand it.
The drone has a clear tonal signature around 200 Hz (its blade-pass frequency) with strong harmonics up to 600 Hz. There’s a broadband component in the 2–6 kHz range that our ears are keenly sensitive to – it’s that mid-to-high-frequency hiss that ‘cuts through’ wind noise and distant road traffic. Even as the drone moves 50m away, the 6 dB per-doubling-of-distance drop still leaves enough SPL in the 3–5 kHz band to be distinctly audible.
The combination of tonal pulses and high-frequency broadband energy makes it sound piercing and penetrating, rather than a more muted noise like an airplane going by.
These drones are too noisy for suburbs. They will be great in the city. Dropping things onto roofs and letting some other process get the contents to the end user. But in suburbs they disturb neighbours peaceful enjoyment too much for widespread adoption for casual things like food and Amazon deliveries. That’s a fundamental problem. You can love the tech, like I do, and know that it isn’t going to be the right fit for the use case.
I place more hope in driverless delivery that parks close by, that you go out to for your food or Amazon package. That’s still at least 5 years away. And a little robot getting out and coming to your door with it, 10 years (except in areas where they burn them).
There’s an easy regulatory change to fix this – drones have to follow the existing road network.
Stay in the areas where we’ve already said it’s acceptable to have noisy vehicles, and where we’ve built appropriate set backs, etc. Don’t go wrecking people’s previously quiet and private areas so your company can make more money by not having to employ someone to deliver it.
Some people are very precious
This Rory guy keeps popping up in my youtube feed, anyway here’s a video of him saying how the press are like vampires for a negative story [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qGPI9ZvNlKw](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qGPI9ZvNlKw)
While I am here and I don’t know why I am bringing this up does any other 80’s remember the schoolbook called Ruarí Romhair (sort of like Ann and Barry), seems like time has erased it for some reason and I am the only one who saw it… I wonder why?