What's the Buzz on Delivery Drones?

William Welser IV, Jia Xu

Expert InsightsPublished Dec 20, 2016

Although Unmanned Aerial Systems — or drones — were first employed on the battlefield, they are also being used in commercial applications, such as maintaining large buildings and cell phone towers, and they already deliver mail and medicine to hard-to-reach places. The reach of commercial drones is expanding, with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) estimating that nearly 3 million commercial drones will be flying by the year 2020. Google and Amazon are making big investments in drone technology. And start-ups such as Zipline, Flirty, and Matternet are already in the air. This video highlights issues explored in detail in a series of forthcoming RAND reports on the future of commercial delivery drones. These issues include technical matters — vehicle design, air traffic control, and energy consumption — as well as locations where drone use makes the most sense (e.g., in urban versus rural environments); their impact on emissions, traffic congestion, and noise; privacy, data, and liability concerns; and the need for new regulations to deal with all of the above.

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RAND Style Manual
Welser, William IV and Jia Xu, What's the Buzz on Delivery Drones? RAND Corporation, PE-230-RC, December 2016. As of September 13, 2024: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE230.html
Chicago Manual of Style
Welser, William IV and Jia Xu, What's the Buzz on Delivery Drones? Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2016. https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE230.html.
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