Delivery drones are expanding across the United States and the UK, sparking a surge of noise complaints from residents. Startups and tech giants, including Amazon and Wing, are now working to develop quieter propellers, pods, and custom propulsion systems to muffle the high-pitched buzz.
Ashley Schmidt no longer spends much time in her garden in the Dallas suburb of North Garland. She has given up cycling to local parks where she used to photograph bugs, lizards, and toads, all because she cannot stand the sound of online delivery drones flying overhead.
Expansion of Drone Deliveries and Community Friction
Schmidt is part of a growing wave of residents living with the rotor noise of unmanned aircraft dispatched by companies like Amazon and Walmart. What started as a delivery novelty is quickly turning into an everyday occurrence across parts of the United States. Amazon Prime Air is expanding its operations to nearly 500 cities and towns, dropping off packages that fit into shoe-box-sized compartments. The service has also launched for customers in and around Darlington in the north of England, while smaller operators deliver flying treats from local pizza shops and ice cream parlours.
Torija Martinez points to research indicating that people react strongly to noise sources they perceive as novel, intrusive, or frequent. While customers who benefit from the service may not mind, complaints are bound to multiply as the sector grows. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration regulates commercial drones but faces criticism for permitting noisy delivery operations, maintaining that local community leaders and operators carry primary responsibility for managing community concerns.
Engineering Quieter Blades and Pods at Greenjets and Sharrow Engineering
To tackle the persistent high-pitched whine, engineering startups are redesigning drone propulsion. London-based Greenjets set out to alter both the overall noise level and its specific frequency. Darren James, future technologies lead at the company, explains that standard drones rely on spinning propellers slicing through open air, which generates that trademark buzz. Greenjets encloses its spinning blades inside a pod to muffle sound and direct noise away from the ground, combining the design with slower rotor speeds and vibration-dampening materials to cut noise by at least two thirds.
This low-noise technology has already found applications beyond home shopping. Police and harbour security teams in Germany have deployed Greenjets’ tech, and conservationists in Africa have used it to track poachers from the air without detection. Robert Tollast, a research fellow at Whitehall think tank The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), notes that battlefield operators also have strong incentives to muffle unmanned vehicles, though he observes that speed often takes priority over stealth for larger drones deployed in the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Propeller design is also shifting elsewhere. Entrepreneur Greg Sharrow started investigating quieter drone mechanics back in 2012 when he needed to film a classical music violinist from a difficult angle without drowning out the performance. Recognizing that most of the noise originated from the propeller rather than the motor, Sharrow Engineering developed twisted propellers designed to operate more quietly.
Despite these technological adjustments, residents like Schmidt remain unconvinced. For her, the only acceptable outcome is simple: a complete pause on flights until operators figure out how to stop being a nuisance.
