Photo credit: William Warby licensed under CC BY 2.0
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
This report from Engadget tells us that Amazon is continuing work on its Prime Air delivery drone. The new version is lighter, sleeker, can fly farther, and is also reported to be quieter.
I like actual noise measurements, in decibels, when someone claims that a mechanical device is quieter than another one. Octave band measurements, measuring sound pressure levels at different frequency bands, provide even more detail. Low frequency sounds carry farther and can penetrate walls better than higher frequency sounds.
I personally am a skeptic about whether drone delivery of packages in urban settings will actually work, but time will tell. In the meantime, I’m glad that someone on the Amazon engineering team is aware that drone noise is a potential problem, and that Amazon appears to be working on making quieter drones.
