Professor Sanjiv Singh, who works for delivery company NearEarth, said that flying drones is quite simple – you just give it some basic instructions: go to this height, do this short task, go back home. But even short flights from a mobile landing place could cause serious problems, he said. “They’re not planning to deliver in areas where nobody lives; they’re planning to deliver from a warehouse to the consumer, which will probably be in a town or city,” he said. “The drone will have to see hazards. Maybe there will be things that the map doesn’t know about. Maybe there will be construction equipment that wasn’t there but is there now. Maybe GPS signals will be blocked so it’s going to have an incorrect idea about where it is.” All this can be solved, he said – but it’s difficult.
Why does Sanjiv mention GPS systems?
To provide an example of a critical problem that may arise during drone flight To argue that people have incorrect ideas about how they work in drones To illustrate how easy it is to fly drones To discuss how common they are