I am talking about actual long distance commercial load carrying drones. Outside of military attack and surveillance drones, which are piloted, the commercial drone world is largely quad rotor style. The automated delivery drone that amazon tried to use was this type, for example.
Outside of military attack and surveillance drones, which are piloted
Not 'which are piloted'. Which 'can be' piloted. They spend the majority of their time flying autonomously. The remote human pilot is there only for specific tasks.
The reason Amazon trialed a quad copter for delivery is because a quad copter doesn't need a fucking runway to land. A fixed wing aircraft can't land on your doorstep, remember?
If Fed Ex or someone decides tomorrow that they want fully autonomous cargo planes, it will not be technically difficult to achieve. Only the regulation and legal red tape will hinder it.
I personally flew multiple fixed-wing UAS using that autopilot when it was new, and they were fully capable of autonomous takeoff and landing back in 2011.
I'm talking about commercial load size craft, not microplanes. Automated drones for long range unsupported action are nowhere near the functionality of a full sized cross country flight cargo plane. The complexities of flight are more than just making a robot go point a to b across a short distance. Terrain and weather and emergency management all require a real pilot and potentially cause signal loss, and a high tonnage cargo drone going down is a huge liability.
Making it fly a bigger plane is comparatively trivial.
Automated drones are all quad rotors, those are slower and more stable, and they don't scale as well. Fixed wing aircraft still require human pilots.
Self driving trucks would make more sense. Infrastructurally, bringing trains back would make even more sense.
Please research outside the world of children's toys.
I am talking about actual long distance commercial load carrying drones. Outside of military attack and surveillance drones, which are piloted, the commercial drone world is largely quad rotor style. The automated delivery drone that amazon tried to use was this type, for example.
Not 'which are piloted'. Which 'can be' piloted. They spend the majority of their time flying autonomously. The remote human pilot is there only for specific tasks.
The reason Amazon trialed a quad copter for delivery is because a quad copter doesn't need a fucking runway to land. A fixed wing aircraft can't land on your doorstep, remember?
If Fed Ex or someone decides tomorrow that they want fully autonomous cargo planes, it will not be technically difficult to achieve. Only the regulation and legal red tape will hinder it.
Fixed-wing autopilots came first, and have been available in the hobby space for well over a decade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArduPilot#Early_years,_2007-2012.
I personally flew multiple fixed-wing UAS using that autopilot when it was new, and they were fully capable of autonomous takeoff and landing back in 2011.
I'm talking about commercial load size craft, not microplanes. Automated drones for long range unsupported action are nowhere near the functionality of a full sized cross country flight cargo plane. The complexities of flight are more than just making a robot go point a to b across a short distance. Terrain and weather and emergency management all require a real pilot and potentially cause signal loss, and a high tonnage cargo drone going down is a huge liability.
We might not have autonomous cargo planes, but we do have drone-piloted goal posts it seems! They move on their own!