Just furious: the noise of drone annoys people more than the noise of cars

Unmanned vehicles are becoming more common. Big, small, smart and not very much - Copters have long ceased to be a wonder. They are used everywhere, from the police to ordinary fans of technology. In addition, various companies are interested in drones, including UPS, Amazon, Domino Pizza and others. Now these organizations are actively developing systems that could serve as a tool for delivering goods to customers. Not so long ago, the same company Amazon filed a patent for a “landing tower” for couriers-couriers. It may well be that in a few years, the drone delivering a pizza will be considered commonplace.



The only problem is that the noise made by the drones annoys people. Not so long ago, NASA published the results of a special study concerning this moment. As it turned out, drones act on people’s nerves much more than any type of ground transportation, even if the volume of the sound produced by the copter and the car is about the same.



“We decided to carry out this test, not knowing that it would show such significant differences,” said one of the study participants, Andrew Christian, who works at the NASA Langley Research Center. The study was conceived as a project that would provide more information about drones and the attitude of people towards them. But it turned out that the results of the study were unexpected for the authors of the study.



Not so many volunteers took part in it, but the result is unequivocal - the copters annoy people , and quite strongly. And there is no explanation for this fact yet. Study participants themselves do not understand why they are so annoyed by the noise of the screws of the copters. Perhaps this effect is manifested for the simple reason that drones are still a novelty for many people, and the noise that they make attracts attention, getting out of the background noise common to humans. Cars have long been a part of our lives, and many of us simply do not notice them.



The study, conducted by NASA, can be called quite objective, because when listening to various types of noise, the subjects were not told what they heard. The volume of the sound from different sources was the same.



It may well be that the “interfering sound” factor can lead to the rejection of drones by a certain part of the population of settlements of any type - even though they are small, even small. And this, in turn, will lead to a slowdown in the introduction of copters for everyday tasks such as cargo delivery. For example, residents of the same street of the city have different attitudes towards the noise of a courier service car and a copter.





However, this problem is unlikely to delay the introduction of the drone for a long time. Amazon and other companies have already gone too far to surrender. Amazon has several developed types of drones that can deliver loads of different weights and sizes. Most of them are able to move at a speed of 95 kilometers per hour. As for the danger of such a system for a person, it will arise only if the multi-rotor suddenly breaks and falls on someone’s head. But developers are trying to avoid such moments, laying air routes for drones passing over sparsely populated areas. “Our copters fly high, being above the roofs of most buildings,” a Amazon spokesman said earlier.



True, the final design of the systems is not yet ready . Amazon explains this as follows: "We are testing several types of aircraft and delivery mechanisms in order to determine the best way in different environments."



In addition, active work is underway to make the copters as quiet as possible. In this case, it becomes possible to remove the “irritation factor,” and people will begin to treat the flying couriers more neutrally. The authors of the study hope that the developers will be able to make the drones invisible to everyone, which will allow us to develop the delivery infrastructure of UAVs faster, as well as other services.



But before drones become widespread as flying employees of various companies, they, these companies, will have to deal with all sorts of legal issues. The problem is that in large cities in most countries flying drones is prohibited. The authorities are just afraid of the cases mentioned above - when the drone fails and falls on someone's head. So before you start developing “Copter” delivery services, you need to amend the existing legislation.