To be clear, they crashed into the vertical cable hanging down from the end of the crane. Not into the structure of the crane itself.
So it's not as bad as "they don't see cranes". But it absolutely raises the question of whether they can see cables, whether hanging from cranes or spanning telephone poles.
And honestly, cables are really hard to see in the air. That's literally why high-voltage power lines hang those big red-orange marker balls on them for pilots to see.
Genuinely curious what the solution here is. Hard-code some logic to identify cranes and always assume there's a cable dangling from the end? Never fly underneath anything? Implement some kind of specialized detection for thin cables if that's possible?
Flying machines are never to be flown near cables. It's not like human pilots on a helicopter can detect and avoid the cables in the first place.
Long-distance transmission wires are sometimes inspected with helicopters, so I guess there are exceptions and protocols, but outside those, flying machines just aren't supposed to fly near cables except for explicit intent to catch them. Especially across or under. You may only approach in slow parallel motions and/or back off.
Contra this assertion, drones are already frequently used around power lines, and as such, "finding hanging wires with a drone" is actually a very active field with fairly robust solutions. Not only are drones used for power line inspections (which are actually a somewhat easier variant of this problem, because the drone usually flies above or adjacent to the power lines in this scenario), but also for infrastructure inspections in direct adjacency to power lines. Power line detect-and-avoid is a headlining feature in one of DJI's newer enterprise platforms, the M400 (where it's based on LIDAR + mmWave Radar fusion).
Also of note, this isn't the first double-failure issue for the MK30 - they had an issue last year at their test facility where their LIDAR malfunctioned in the same way on two drones in the same weather condition (misting), the drones believed they were at 0.0AGL and powered down in flight.
Yeah. Friend of mine was a news helicopter pilot and he had one of these systems that will cut a cable if you hit one by accident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6CsNqhAeeQ . Better than getting tangled, I guess.
Here's an excellent video from Juan Browne around the challenges that wires present to aircraft operations [1]. Some of these are human factors for manned aircraft, like seeing a wire but then forgetting it's there, but one of his points is that it's simply safest to avoid flying below 1000ft AGL. That's not an option for drones today, and they presumably don't (yet) have the ability of humans to make inferences about the likelihood of cables near cranes and transmission line towers, making them particularly vulnerable.
If you've ever driven through Seattle, as you come past Boeing Field on I5 there are red spheres on the power lines. These lines are on a hill across the highway from the airport, so there's no way any plane should be there except during an emergency landing due to power loss.
There are situations where aircraft and wires might come in close proximity. It's more accurate to say that be default we keep them way the hell away from each other, we make exceptions for special circumstances, and the exceptions tend to seem far more conservative than you would guess.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the drone shouldn't be flying anywhere near the crane. It's an active construction zone with a structure that moves and swings about in unpredictable ways with people and equipment moving about below. It shouldn't be delivering to the construction zone, and if it can't figure out how to stay out of the area, it doesn't belong in the sky.
There are some FAA requirements about cranes/temporary structures that would give pilots an appropriate NOTAM, but I don't know if all cranes require this. That said, I'd argue that if it isn't tall enough to require notifying the FAA, the drone is flying too low.
This honestly seems like the obvious approach. Even if we suppose you have perfect sensors flying underneath something still means something might be dropped on you... why risk it when you can just fly above it?
You may have a tall mas or an antenna and massive cables stretching at angles around it for support. The distance between the base of the mast and the base of supporting cables can be quite large, so even a simple logic like "stay 100m away from tall structures" can be insufficient.
It would be interesting to see what comes out of this investigation. Hopefully the injured person will be alright.
But then how do you deliver to the upper floors of vertical buildings? That must be half the near-term market for these kinds of drones: people in dense, urban areas well-served by local droneports, who are looking for convenience above all else.
If you can't safely manage urban canyons—you can't manage. It'd be like selling self-driving cars that are only approved for private racetracks.
Here's a curious article I read the other day, that underscores the market factor:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45445406 ("What It Takes to Get Lunch Delivered to the 70th Floor in a Shenzhen Skyscraper (nytimes.com)" / "An informal network of last-mile runners close the gap between harried delivery drivers and hungry office workers in a Shenzhen skyscraper")
That doesn’t make it better. The cable hangs down from the crane and thus the rest of the structure is still nearby. The drone should be well clear of any obstructions precisely to avoid this sort of thing from happening with hard-to-see ancillary obstructions. Something went really wrong here with the tech.
For manned flight instrument approaches the FAA has very nuanced math that defines this which typically comes down to a few hundred feet. That translates pretty well here too. Amazon will need to explain to the FAA why they were flying anywhere near this crane let alone that close and below the hight of its support structure. There’s no real defense for doing something that stupid.
I had a look at the video... if that's the crane that was in the incident then the drone was simply way too low for cruising. This isn't a tower crane with a flight restriction. They were moving equipment on the roof of a single story building.
I suppose recognizing that there is a cable even when we don't clearly see it, but we know it is there because we know the concept of a crane, is exactly the amodal completion of our brain's top-down perceptual inference that CNNs and whatever else those drones use are currently still lacking?
It shouldn't be necessary to hardcore such things if the goal is to build something resembling intelligence.
Of course for a drone it might be more feasible to do so though.
The easy answer is to follow the same rule that you have for every other certificated aircraft and operator: Never fly under a structure. When humans do stupid shit like this, we take away their license.
I don't think they will take away their license, but AMZN should have to explain exactly how their drones managed to crash by flying themselves under an obstruction twice in a row.
Neural nets in drones are only used for object recognition. Beyond that, drones (and other autonomous vehicles) aren’t doing any sort of reasoning or decision making, they follow rules, they’re just robots.
Although I hear that Tesla is thinking about using AI for decision making as well, which I find quite scary. Frankly I think it’s safer if vehicles don’t have concepts and intelligence, and just follow the rules.
> raises the question of whether they can see cables
Should the drone's vision be comparable to a humans though?
I feel like drones can either see or don't. If we go and try to tackle every corner case then nothing would come of it.
Also, do I - as a citizen - have to bear the externalities of Amazon's beta testing?
The video perspective might be misleading - but if the area surrounding the crane is as totally devoid from other obstacles as it appears? I wonder if the operator maybe didn't see the crane. How is that possible? No idea.
14 CFR 107 covers visual line of sight commercial UAS operations. My two cents is the operator should fly around or over and well clear of the crane. They're given a wide latitude. If within 400' of a structure, they can fly up to 400' above the highest point of that structure.
However, it seems probable these operations are BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight), which requires a waiver from the FAA. In which case most of 107.205 applies. I'm not sure if the operating agreement between Amazon and FAA is public information.
Avoiding structures is pretty basic to operational control and responsibility. The fact they hit a seemingly obvious and avoidable structure, the ensuing loss of control being inevitable, which can (and in this case did) lead to on the ground injuries. Pretty remarkable operational failure in my opinion.
We’ve completed our own internal review of this incident and are confident that there wasn’t an issue with the drones or the technology that supports them, Terrence Clark, an Amazon spokesperson told CNN. Nonetheless, we’ve introduced additional processes like enhanced visual landscape inspections to better monitor for moving obstructions such as cranes.
Correct, never fly underneath anything. Telephone poles? Trees? Assume there is a solid wall between the highest point on any two objects except within a few yards of the delivery spot.
Aerial Lidar is pretty good at detecting power line cables. Power line mapping is a major use case for it. However, that's in large part because at the scan distance, the beam already has quite a big diameter that is likely to hit the cable. Maybe a higher beam radius scanner could work out for close-distance cable detection
The company that I work for builds power line detectors for helicopters. They sense the electromagnetic fields generated by the lines and alert the pilot when the field strength exceeds a threshold. I would imagine this tech could be easily adapted for a drone.
Obviously that wouldn't work for a crane though...
For commercial deliveries I would expect them to designate a landing zone guaranteed to be free of obstacles vertically. I'm guessing that installing radar detailed enough to see swinging cables is nearly impossible.
The same problem actually already exists for non-drone planes, because they must be able to operate in poor visibility conditions. FAA issues notams for construction cranes if they pose a risk to nearby airports. One solution for drones would be to extend these notams to all cranes/other obstacles, and the drones must subscribe to these notams to operate in the airspace.
The fact that these things are flying without rock solid “avoid this giant fucking thing” logic is asinine. The solution is don’t fly like a child playing a flight sim for the first time. Don’t zip around anything let alone construction cranes. Use common sense flight paths, decks and ceilings like everything else in the air.
The police is not qualified to investigate this. The only people that should be investigating is people who understand the code that the drones run.
Accidents will happen as long as we, as a society, agree and desire to have new tech. The investigations and bug fixes should be left to people who understand the tech.
The Feds will quickly arrive and take over. Aviation issues are
Federal matters. The only role of local law enforcement and emergency response is to provide any first aid and then secure the scene for the Feds. Unless lives are at risk local police shouldn’t even touch anything. They put up yellow tape around the scene and keep it secure until the FAA and/or NTSB arrive.
I'm not sure why this is getting down voted. Indeed, the FAA is the correct investigating body here as the local police department has no jurisdiction over aviation accidents. They should have immediately called in the FAA to investigate.
Not at a distance. They're basically transparent even to our naked eyes at aircraft speed and distance scales. Let alone to digital cameras on flying robots. They'll probably have to either use really good active sensors(ITAR), or infer possible areas of danger from visually cable-end-like features.
Flying in uncontrolled airspace in VMC is a “see and avoid” environment, meaning this looks like a pretty bad screw up by Amazon.
The fact that two different drones crashed into the same object raises even more serious questions on the quality of Amazon’s tech and their ability to safely monitor it.
It means Amazon’s approach to its “see and avoid” responsibility is fundamentally flawed in some way vs this being a one-off fluke with a broken sensor or other anomaly.
At the same time? If there's a crash there should be an automatic system which geofences off that area making it impossible for other drones to go near there, while the situation is assessed.
If a drone crashes, obviously no other drones should fly there until a human determines what went wrong and presses the 'resume' button. The fact that that system did not exist is a systemic problem.
Wires are somewhere between hard and not possible to see, visually. The "fix" for this might be "that kinda looks like it might be construction over there, go around".
> Our approval includes the ability to fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight, using our sophisticated on-board detect and avoid system. This is an historic, first-of-its-kind approval for a new drone system and a new operating location following a rigorous FAA evaluation of the safety of our systems and processes.
It's true the FAA would have had to have signed off on these so that will be interesting.
I'm mildly amused by this. It's an open air environment, did someone go stand over one of the crashed drones as it burst into flames and just, breathed deep? Glad they got treatment, plastic smoke is gross.
Also wow, the drones are massive, and apparently flying so low they will hit cranes putting things on single story buildings? That's so stupid.
Dear tech world: Please do not fly 80 pound projectiles just a few feet above my head at speed. Jeeze.
The video also includes a video clip of package delivery, where drone would drop package to the ground, which worked. But then propeller blew the package right into the bush was lmao.
China is way ahead here. There's now a Ministry of the Low Altitude Economy.[1]
There's a Low Altitude Flight Service System, which is air traffic control for drones and flying cars. There are licenses for drone operators, categories of license, (advanced licenses require a flight exam), etc.
China hasn't had much general aviation. There are very few private aircraft. So there was nothing like the US's FAA Flight Service Stations. Plans to change that started in 2018, as a new design, mostly automated. That system also handles drones above 120 meters, or is supposed to.
Delivery is to a box like an Amazon delivery box. Here's the current list of delivery locations and how to use the app to order.[3] Weight limit 2.3kg. Delivery time 15 minutes.
It's still rather limited. You can't have a delivery platform on your balcony yet. Mostly they deliver to parks and big open plazas.
The Shenzhen city administration seems to be very drone-friendly. There are delivery drones.
Advertising drones. Light show drones. Police drones.
Like, they may have trained on power lines, catenaries above rail tracks, network cables, etc. but all of them are horizontal. And the software couldn't recognize vertical cables or cables at an angle.
Little after 10am, pure speculation but wonder if the angle of the sun overwhelmed the dynamic range of the image sensor over a particularly inopportune area of the frame. Guessing no LiDAR on drones like this.
Fine speculation. But they should be smart enough not to fly into their own blind spots e.g. the sun. They would tack back and forth I bet. They have a lot of tricks like this.
I bet it has to be a confluence of factors. I hope Amazon reports openly what went wrong. FAA should demand it. Will be a very interesting report if we ever get to read it.
Given the severity of this it’s likely the NTSB will get involved, and Amazon’s ability to operate would likely be suspended pending a review of their operation.
Based on the descriptions I've read so far, it sounds like the drones didn't give enough space around the crane boom, which it seems like they avoided. That's not to make an excuse. But it's a different defect than failing to detect the crane boom.
My theory could in theory hold if a specular highlight off the boom arm created some type of confusion I suppose, however, I posted it as just thinking aloud, I don't have much faith in my own theory at large.
(my degree is in digital imaging technology so, fun thinking problems for me :)
I wonder if they do a routine map of the delivery area (with a Lidar plane) so they have a high-resolution scan of the city for better pathing. But they didn't expect something like a crane that could be assembled so high and fast to be in the way.
I'm currently in Phoenix and it's a little after 10am and the sun is almost directly overhead at this time of day. Would they need sensors pointing directly overhead in-flight?
No one could have known. And in Phoenix, no less, where it's famously overcast most of the time? Next you're going to tell me that a component overheated or clocked down for thermal throttling - preposterous, Phoenix is great for passive cooling! /s
mmWave is the usual solution for this; I know that Amazon were at least testing using mmWave but I'm not sure if it made it to their production drones.
I can't seem to locate any NOTAMs indicating the presence of the crane. There are NOTAMs for a crane to the NNW of KGRY (Phoenix Goodyear Airport) but Tolleson is to the east of that airport.
Is there a hole in how we're doing NOTAMs if we're expecting to have UAS operating at low altitude away from airports?
Also, what other obstacle data is available? I know the US Gov't aviation maps depict significant man made structures that stick up like towers, windmills, and larger buildings. However, when you look at the NY Heli map, it's clear that not every building in Manhattan is depicted. These are generally low enough that a helo would be operating in see-and-avoid (VFR).
Perhaps there is a new market available for this navigation data...
I looked at the NOTAM guidance and they are simply not required if the crane's boom is lowered at night. Actually this pattern appears in a lot of NOTAM requirements. The FAA is permissive by default and they seem to think you don't need to report things that are 'visible'.
Also, I dont think any of the equipment in this scene needs to be advertised to aircraft. None of this stuff is taller than a normal tree and we aren't filing NOTAMs for the presence of every public park, right?
Readit News
So it's not as bad as "they don't see cranes". But it absolutely raises the question of whether they can see cables, whether hanging from cranes or spanning telephone poles.
And honestly, cables are really hard to see in the air. That's literally why high-voltage power lines hang those big red-orange marker balls on them for pilots to see.
Genuinely curious what the solution here is. Hard-code some logic to identify cranes and always assume there's a cable dangling from the end? Never fly underneath anything? Implement some kind of specialized detection for thin cables if that's possible?
Long-distance transmission wires are sometimes inspected with helicopters, so I guess there are exceptions and protocols, but outside those, flying machines just aren't supposed to fly near cables except for explicit intent to catch them. Especially across or under. You may only approach in slow parallel motions and/or back off.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HFzRTRcjiqg
Also of note, this isn't the first double-failure issue for the MK30 - they had an issue last year at their test facility where their LIDAR malfunctioned in the same way on two drones in the same weather condition (misting), the drones believed they were at 0.0AGL and powered down in flight.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-16/amazon-re...
[1] https://youtu.be/jjV_k4-DstQ
There are situations where aircraft and wires might come in close proximity. It's more accurate to say that be default we keep them way the hell away from each other, we make exceptions for special circumstances, and the exceptions tend to seem far more conservative than you would guess.
In recent years they’ve been moving to drones for this job. Besides improving safety, drones allow increased inspection frequency and reduce costs.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the drone shouldn't be flying anywhere near the crane. It's an active construction zone with a structure that moves and swings about in unpredictable ways with people and equipment moving about below. It shouldn't be delivering to the construction zone, and if it can't figure out how to stay out of the area, it doesn't belong in the sky.
There are some FAA requirements about cranes/temporary structures that would give pilots an appropriate NOTAM, but I don't know if all cranes require this. That said, I'd argue that if it isn't tall enough to require notifying the FAA, the drone is flying too low.
This honestly seems like the obvious approach. Even if we suppose you have perfect sensors flying underneath something still means something might be dropped on you... why risk it when you can just fly above it?
It would be interesting to see what comes out of this investigation. Hopefully the injured person will be alright.
But then how do you deliver to the upper floors of vertical buildings? That must be half the near-term market for these kinds of drones: people in dense, urban areas well-served by local droneports, who are looking for convenience above all else.
If you can't safely manage urban canyons—you can't manage. It'd be like selling self-driving cars that are only approved for private racetracks.
Here's a curious article I read the other day, that underscores the market factor:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45445406 ("What It Takes to Get Lunch Delivered to the 70th Floor in a Shenzhen Skyscraper (nytimes.com)" / "An informal network of last-mile runners close the gap between harried delivery drivers and hungry office workers in a Shenzhen skyscraper")
Wasn't this problem solved thousands of years ago by euclid?
For the sake of clarity: I am not arguing against your point, nor am I defending Amazon or the tech in any way shape or form.
It shouldn't be necessary to hardcore such things if the goal is to build something resembling intelligence.
Of course for a drone it might be more feasible to do so though.
I don't think they will take away their license, but AMZN should have to explain exactly how their drones managed to crash by flying themselves under an obstruction twice in a row.
Although I hear that Tesla is thinking about using AI for decision making as well, which I find quite scary. Frankly I think it’s safer if vehicles don’t have concepts and intelligence, and just follow the rules.
Should the drone's vision be comparable to a humans though? I feel like drones can either see or don't. If we go and try to tackle every corner case then nothing would come of it.
Also, do I - as a citizen - have to bear the externalities of Amazon's beta testing?
> Genuinely curious what the solution here is
Walk to the store to get your package.
14 CFR 107 covers visual line of sight commercial UAS operations. My two cents is the operator should fly around or over and well clear of the crane. They're given a wide latitude. If within 400' of a structure, they can fly up to 400' above the highest point of that structure.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-107#p-107.51(b)
However, it seems probable these operations are BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight), which requires a waiver from the FAA. In which case most of 107.205 applies. I'm not sure if the operating agreement between Amazon and FAA is public information.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-107#p-107.205
Avoiding structures is pretty basic to operational control and responsibility. The fact they hit a seemingly obvious and avoidable structure, the ensuing loss of control being inevitable, which can (and in this case did) lead to on the ground injuries. Pretty remarkable operational failure in my opinion.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-107#p-107.23(a)
We’ve completed our own internal review of this incident and are confident that there wasn’t an issue with the drones or the technology that supports them, Terrence Clark, an Amazon spokesperson told CNN. Nonetheless, we’ve introduced additional processes like enhanced visual landscape inspections to better monitor for moving obstructions such as cranes.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/02/us/arizona-amazon-drones-cras...
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Obviously that wouldn't work for a crane though...
Probably this one. Even if the drone sees the crane, there's no guarantee the cable won't move faster than the drone can react.
Maybe the solution is not to cheap out by trying to squeeze every possible cent out of package delivery and pay to keep humans in the loop.
I work with 3d scanning lidar every day and I know this as a fact.
They have no excuse there.
no fly zones around construction sites?
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The police is not qualified to investigate this. The only people that should be investigating is people who understand the code that the drones run.
Accidents will happen as long as we, as a society, agree and desire to have new tech. The investigations and bug fixes should be left to people who understand the tech.
The fact that two different drones crashed into the same object raises even more serious questions on the quality of Amazon’s tech and their ability to safely monitor it.
Wires are somewhere between hard and not possible to see, visually. The "fix" for this might be "that kinda looks like it might be construction over there, go around".
I work with 3d scanning lidar every day and I know this as a fact.
They have no excuse there.
> Our approval includes the ability to fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight, using our sophisticated on-board detect and avoid system. This is an historic, first-of-its-kind approval for a new drone system and a new operating location following a rigorous FAA evaluation of the safety of our systems and processes.
It's true the FAA would have had to have signed off on these so that will be interesting.
* No one was injured directly, but someone was treated for smoke inhalation
* The drones "were flying back to back"
* They hit the cable of a crane (including a link to a video showing the crane). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_ZpY6qHcTk
I'm mildly amused by this. It's an open air environment, did someone go stand over one of the crashed drones as it burst into flames and just, breathed deep? Glad they got treatment, plastic smoke is gross.
Also wow, the drones are massive, and apparently flying so low they will hit cranes putting things on single story buildings? That's so stupid.
Dear tech world: Please do not fly 80 pound projectiles just a few feet above my head at speed. Jeeze.
https://youtu.be/E_ZpY6qHcTk?t=134
China hasn't had much general aviation. There are very few private aircraft. So there was nothing like the US's FAA Flight Service Stations. Plans to change that started in 2018, as a new design, mostly automated. That system also handles drones above 120 meters, or is supposed to.
[1] https://businessaviation.aero/evtol-news-and-electric-aircra...
Australia gets a lot of Chinese student pilots.
Shipping end: [1]
Receiving end: [2]
Delivery is to a box like an Amazon delivery box. Here's the current list of delivery locations and how to use the app to order.[3] Weight limit 2.3kg. Delivery time 15 minutes.
It's still rather limited. You can't have a delivery platform on your balcony yet. Mostly they deliver to parks and big open plazas.
The Shenzhen city administration seems to be very drone-friendly. There are delivery drones. Advertising drones. Light show drones. Police drones.
[1] https://wp.technologyreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/R...
[2] https://wp.technologyreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/m...
[3] https://shenzhentimes.com/how-to-order-takeout-by-drone-in-s...
I bet it has to be a confluence of factors. I hope Amazon reports openly what went wrong. FAA should demand it. Will be a very interesting report if we ever get to read it.
Deleted Comment
(my degree is in digital imaging technology so, fun thinking problems for me :)
I can't seem to locate any NOTAMs indicating the presence of the crane. There are NOTAMs for a crane to the NNW of KGRY (Phoenix Goodyear Airport) but Tolleson is to the east of that airport.
Is there a hole in how we're doing NOTAMs if we're expecting to have UAS operating at low altitude away from airports?
Also, what other obstacle data is available? I know the US Gov't aviation maps depict significant man made structures that stick up like towers, windmills, and larger buildings. However, when you look at the NY Heli map, it's clear that not every building in Manhattan is depicted. These are generally low enough that a helo would be operating in see-and-avoid (VFR).
Perhaps there is a new market available for this navigation data...
Also, I dont think any of the equipment in this scene needs to be advertised to aircraft. None of this stuff is taller than a normal tree and we aren't filing NOTAMs for the presence of every public park, right?
https://i.imgur.com/fmxVXQz.png