Professor Sanjiv Singh, who runs a cargo delivery company called NearEarth, said that, to pilot a state-of-the-art drone, you simply give it some basic instructions: go to this altitude, perform this short task, go back home. But even short flights from a mobile landing pad could cause serious logistical problems, he said. “They’re not going to deliver from one uninhabited place to another uninhabited place; they’re going to deliver from a warehouse to the consumer, which will probably be an urban area,” he said. “There are going to be hazards that the vehicle is going to have to see. Maybe there will be terrain that the map doesn’t know about. Then, maybe there’s construction equipment that wasn’t there before but is there now. Maybe GPS signals are blocked, in which case it’s going to have an incorrect idea about where it is.” All these problems 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