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Comment by iwr | Hacker News Reader

RC planes (drones): soon the staple of any serious paparazzi.

If I had a billion dollars and had paparazzi chasing me, I would love for them to try this so that I'd get to mount an AA gun on my yacht and shoot them down.

I have an unshakeable imagine of an Englishman in a tweed jacket chomping on a cigar holding a shotgun. "Hunting ducks always struck me as uncivilized. Skeet can't dodge. Drones, though, drones are perfect."

I picture Jack Nicholson in this role.

Jack Nicholson and Dick Cheney, in the buddy movie to end all buddy movies.

All is fun and games until drones start firing back at ya.

... or that just means you are in Pakistan.

Not planes, quadrotors http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM

Cool video - it's too bad the sensors and processing power were external to the robot. I look forward to the day when something like this is truly autonomous.

I'm... not so sure I look forward to that day.

Thus, no doubt, spoiling it for everybody as it suddenly becomes illegal to fly a remote-controlled plane without a licence.

Yes.. sadly this will end with regulation- more of it.

Well, with this kind of thing becoming more popular as it becomes more possible (thanks to improved batteries and cheap small video cameras) it's only a matter of time before it gets regulated.

Even if everybody only used them with the best intentions, someday someone's gonna get seriously hurt by getting clobbered on the head by one of these things.

Still, for now: awesome video!

Isn't this "what if" thinking the whole problem with, for example, the TSA?

Yes, someone will get hurt. Someone may even die. It will be terrible, but it will be an accident. We can't prevent all accidents, nor should we try.

Why is that sad? As these get more and more autonomous they will be capable of targeted assassination. The same hardware accelerated face-recognition chip in your $50 point-and-shoot camera will wind up making point-and-shoot a taboo phrase.

If those things have enough range, you can just stay indoors, safe from police interference. It would be very difficult to trace unless the cops ran around in triangulation squads.

Other ways to do it could be by wireless internet.

Or they just wait until it lands. Either they catch you picking it up or they confiscate it from you; either way the flight becomes unworthwhile.

If the contraptions are cheap enough, or the footage valuable enough, there'd be no need to recover it.

Latency.

There are already 802.11 drones with video and cell phones that can act as a wireless hot spot. Combine the two and I don't think latency would be bad enough to prevent you from flying it remotely.

I would be more concerned with battery life or dangers of mechanical failure on something large enough to use liquid fuel.

[1] http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/usa/

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/13/exclusive-google-to-add-tet...

LoS

Shouldn't a license or some form of registration be required? What if it hits a building or car by mistake? There needs to be some way to trace it to the owner to pay for the damages.

I'm thinking the owner is probably the guy who runs up saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Will that always happen? No, of course not. Some people are jerks. Are most people jerks, though? No. The last thing we need is more laws, especially ones that enforce responsibilities most people will take on for themselves.

These planes can fly for miles as did this one in the video. The owner isn't going to be running up to anyone after a crash because he'll have to get in a car first and drive over.

If your going to be flying something though the air that has a large range and can seriously hurt someone or damage property, it's not to much to ask that it be registered somewhere. Simple registration number so we know who the owner is.

Edit: The remote can also lose contact and the owner wouldn't know where the plane crashed to cover property damages.

By this logic, people should have registration numbers tattooed on their foreheads, so that if one commits a crime (or just looks at you wrong), we can immediately find it.

Makes perfect sense, right?

No, that doesn't really make any sense, but having people register long-range aircraft makes sense to me.

Are you going to be as happy when someone makes that same argument about baseball?

"What if a baseball hits a car or a building?

I mean, those things aren't even under the operators control after they've left the hand (or bat). And my god, think about it! They could fill one with high explosives!

Quick, we need to regulate this. Every baseball needs a registration number so we can identify it's owner, and every baseball bat and throwing arm needs to be licensed!"

I don't see how the two are similar at all. When a baseball comes crashing through your window or hits you in the head the person who's responsible is most likely a few dozen feet away. Chances are it's a neighborhood kid who's easily identifiable.

When a model airplane smashes into a car, person, building, etc. the owner could be thousands of feet (or miles as we see in this video) away. It's extremely difficult to trace the plane back to the owner.

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