[crooked-v]

That's already more or less a solved problem with consumer drones: outside a catastrophic mechanical failure like a wing shattering or the motherboars spontaneously dying, the failure state is that the drone either returns to its starting location using GPS, or hovers and waits for manual control until its battery is almost out and then slowly descends while beeping loudly.

[meheleventyone]

The current version of the drones used here and mentioned by the FAA is a fixed wing design though, it’s only the second version that has the ability to hover. A loss of power at low altitude is going to mean it crashes into something. Reading through the links in the article there’s a lot of mention of their Detect & Avoidance system so presumably it can somewhat safely steer through the airspace.

I assume given the 5m radius for drops they’re going to be operating in places that mostly have low density though. I’d also assume that they’d plan flight paths to be as safe as possible.

[singularity2001]

in the video, it says that they have backup components or everything, and if they fail a parachute activates

[josefresco]

> That's already more or less a solved problem with consumer drones

The words of a man who's never experienced rapid, unexpected, uncontrollable "drone flyaway". And yes, I have a modern, very capable drone and I'm not a complete idiot. Sometimes they just go... crazy.