Arminen 1

Alexa Arminen
Ms. Dahle
English 1010, P4
5 December 2016
Will Pizza Delivery Grow Propellers?
When I was little, a magical stork brought my baby brother to me in a white sack. My
neighbors just received their third child by drone, and I assume the stork industry is going out of
business. While storks have been in the delivery business since the beginning, the technological
era has taken over. However, their jobs will not be replaced until the drones can take flight in the
popular imagination. Drones will help benefit businesses around the United States once the FAA
has the proper delivery regulations in place. Even though the storks may be out of a job, these
machines will bring back jobs from other countries and expand the delivery industry.
Amazon and Google have forever changed the way we access information and order
packages and both are looking to new horizons in order to improve their companies. These
corporations have invested large sums of money to begin using drones (Vijayan) in their
businesses; however, they remain grounded in the United States and have yet to have a clear take
off date. Due to the lack of FAA regulations for large corporations, nothing seems to be
happening. However, in other parts of the world, such as Switzerland, the Ecole Polytechnique
Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) has been working to launch drones in Africa through their
Afrotech Technology project. The EPFL is raising funds to use drones to launch Red and Blue
cargo drone routes in Africa next year (Jackson). Brandon East believes that routes like these
will help deliver medical supplies (East) on the red route and packages on the blue route in a

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sustainable matter--since drones dont emit carbon monoxide. If drones were to take off in the
United States we could see an economic rise, and bring many jobs to the market and replace the
ones lost from the inevitable transfer to drones. Change is always inevitable, and I believe that
the transfer to drones is no different because of the other outcomes around the world. In the New
Zealand pizza industry drones are the delivery men, and in the United States drones guide new
students around MIT. Drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are bringing many different
jobs to the table and are revolutionizing the delivery industry.
The FAAs job is to keep our skies safe, so they are the ones who must make decisions
about what and where can fly in our skies. Therefore, they must not avoid making these
important decisions. In other parts of the world the drone industry has begun to take flight, but in
the United States we remain grounded in the delivery industry. Our economic giants continue to
go overseas to distribute jobs that could be for the American people because they arent allowed
to use drones on US soil. The reason is that Google has been doing all of its aerial tests outside
the US (Roesler) is because of the lack of delivery regulations. These machines could open up a
variety of different jobs and make a handful of existing jobs safer. For domestic drone operators
the rules are fairly simple--if the drone weighs less than a half a pound. Once a drone is over a
half pound, the rules become more complex (West). Other than staying in a low risk
environment and getting a certificate needed to fly--which costs a small fee--there are a handful
of regulations that in place. The Federal Regulation Of Domestic Drones states that drone
operators may not be under the influence of alcohol, must remain clear of aircraft operations,
never fly in adverse conditions, contact airports if flying within five miles of them, remain below

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4000 feet, must keep your drone within visual distance, and keep it off of private property with
respect to others. These regulations help keep everyone in the sky safe so no one gets hurt.
Anti-drone users like Jason Reagan claim that with the drone revolution their privacy will
be taken from them, packages will fall from the sky, and that strangers will be watching them
from these devices. That they will lose their privacy because someone will always be watching
them. These anti-drone preachers also claim that drones can be weapons for terrorism and cause
a mass wave of chaos and that they have the right to shoot unwelcome drones out of the sky.
Anti-drone people claim these flying contraptions will break many FAA regulations that will put
them in danger whether its from dropping packages or arming these toys with cameras and
taking away regular citizens privacy. These devices wont be flying through the air with minds
of their own because they are not artificial intelligence. These drones will be piloted from a
control center meaning that there is a person behind a computer monitor controlling where and
when a drone lands. The initial course for a delivery drone is a straight up and down delivery.
The delivery drone would stay at its initial traveling height, hover down to its destination, and
then fly back up to its initial height (Weiss) and continue delivering packages or return to
wherever it flew from. However according to fig. 1, dropping a package is close to impossible.
Drones have supports surrounding all sides of the package when in flight, and the package itself
is within another box that is connected to the drones infrastructure. Therefore, dropping a
package would have to be deliberate and the drone would have to either malfunction or be
messed with. If a package fell it would have to be intentional and the package couldnt randomly
drop. There are already drone regulations prohibiting the tampering of drones. If this has
happened to someone they could report to the FAA or police. The main problem with those who

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are anti-drone is that most of their claims or fears stem from a lack of regulation. Most of these
regulations are drafted and are already in place. The main reason the FAA hasnt drafted more
specific rules is because there is so much
These theories that delivery drones would spy on others private lives are ridiculous
because there are laws and regulations in place to prevent such actions. The anti-drone people are
creating the story that is making regular drones sound like dangerous weapons and that they are
being used to cause chaos because they are delivering contraband such as cell phones of drugs
to prisoners (Reagan). Drones are not the ones doing the killing they are remote controlled
machines. This fear of terrorism in the world has been constant because the amount of unknown
information taken into account. We dont know who, what, where, when, or why these events
take place until afterwards when terrorist organizations claim that the individual who caused
these attacks believes in their system. We cant simply stop being afraid, but living in fear wont
solve any problems either. The fear that drones will be modified into weapons of chaos isnt
really feasible because almost all drones on the market dont have the power to fly with weapons
mounted to them. There are also regulations stating that drones cannot be flown on private
property without the owner's consent. Even when drone delivery does take off, the drones won't
be able to handle delivering all items. Imagine a couch being delivered by drone. That wouldnt
be safe, so we can assume that furniture delivery by drone wont become a reality any time soon.
The main reason these big industries want to go into the drone business is because its an
efficient means of delivering packages long distances without hassle. These drones will be

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continuously monitored by a control station at the company's location.

Fig. 1. Alyssa Newcomb, Alibaba Beats Amazon to Drone Delivery, 4 Feb. 2015,
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/alibaba-beats-amazon-drone-delivery/story?id=28720942
As the storks continue to make their final deliveries this holiday season, the drones in the
world wait quietly to take to the skies. New technological advances constantly surround us, and
if we dont embrace, we will miss the opportunity to be apart of something great. Many jobs will
be created with the take off of this industry. Drones arent artificial intelligence of any sort.
UAV are robots with pilots at the helm. They can deliver pizza and maybe some gifts from
Santa. There is always danger out there and we can choose to sit there and wait for a drone
wielding a dangerous weapon to deploy, but with reasonable safety regulations, drones will be
one of the safest ways for your package to arrive. These amazing pieces of technology will
revolutionize the delivery industry and soon pizza delivery will be a short flight away.

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Works Cited
East, Brandon. Personal Interview. 18 Nov. 2016.
"Federal Regulation Of Domestic Drones." Congressional Digest 95.6 (2016): 7-8. Academic
Search Premier. 1 June 2016.
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=af5b5516-5094-4d2e-a8fd-6a
d57212aa53%40sessionmgr4009&vid=21&hid=4201 Accessed 17 Nov. 2016.
Jackson, Tom. "Can Drones Propel Africa's Infrastructure?." New African 557 (2016): 56-57.
Academic Search Premier. 17 Jan. 2016.
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=112146616&site=ehos
t-live Accessed 16 Nov. 2016.
Reagan, Jason. "5 Anti-Drone Solutions That Could Change the Game." DRONELIFE. 03 June
2015. Accessed 17 Jan. 2017.
Roeseler, Peter. FAA Dawdling Makes Google Take Drone Testing Overseas. Web Marketing
Pros 3 Sept. 2014.
http://www.webmarketingpros.com/blog/faa-dawdling-makes-google-take-drone-testingoverseas/ Accessed 12 Jan. 2017
Vijayan, Jaikumar. "Google And Others Could Start Drone Deliveries As Early As 2017."
Eweek (2016): 1. Academic Search Premier. 12 Jan. 2016.
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?sid=5d763858-069e-4898-b6a6-540246a6
1189%40sessionmgr4007&vid=0&hid=4201&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d
%3d#AN=112263716&db=aph Accessed 8 Nov. 2016.
Weiss, Todd R. "FAA Sets First Commercial Drone Rules: No Package Delivery Yet." Eweek

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(2016): 1. Academic Search Premier. 22 June 2016.
http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?sid=a68ab89d-6bab-4b73-b0d2-e21b4c21
24a3%40sessionmgr106&vid=0&hid=129&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%
3d#AN=116368562&db=aph. Accessed 8 Nov. 2016.
West, Gretchen. "Drone On." Foreign Affairs 94.3 (2015): 90-97. Academic Search Premier.
May 2015.
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?sid=afa02e8f-5402-46fe-be3f-f159c4d75bf
c%40sessionmgr4007&vid=0&hid=4201&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3
d#AN=102116860&db=aph. Accessed 8 Nov. 2016.