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Comment by fbelzile | Hacker News Reader

Probably a naive question, but why don't they use multiple drones instead? Wouldn't that be much safer and cheaper?

Several reasons: - autonomy is in the 1/2h range for rotary-wing drones, you would need a lot of drones/operators throughout the race (it lasts 6h on average). - the cameras/lenses used are huge, in the tens of kg, you could be closer with smaller drones thus requiring lighter lenses, but still, I think you would need big drones to keep the same quality. That means less safe and cheap. - speed, the riders can reach 80-90kmph when going down, which is about/higher than the top speed of most drones. - worse visibility/reactivity than a team in a helicopter, so harder to adapt to the action. - better weather resistance

All around, helicopters are still the better option right now. I guess they could/do use drones for some specific sections: climbs with a lot of public and similar where endurance/speed is less an issue and you can go much closer.

1) Copters have been around a while, drones have only gotten "good enough" in the last 5ish years

2) Its ~30 12 hour days of racing, I am not sure drones have that kind of capacity. Would need many many drones and some complex rotations.

It doesn't detract from your point especially, but the Tour de France comprises 21 stages and the average stage is around 4-5 hours.

Furthermore, the helicopters covering the Tour are not flying for 4-5 hours straight; they make scheduled refueling stops during the race.

Let's say you need 50x the number of drones to achieve parity. Are drones 50x safer (where safer includes the consequences of accident)

Regardless, good engineering dictates that one shouldn't change a working system.

It's be great too if someday they could replace the motorcycles with drones.

One of the advantages of using motorcycles is that they can get shots from in amongst the bikes, at more or less the same level as the riders. Maybe using drones would work, but if I were riding a professional cycle race I'm not sure how happy I'd be about having drones buzzing around at head level.

Some riders complain about the motorcycles, because other riders can draft behind them.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/riders-cry-foul-at-tour-de-f...

There have been enough significant accidents caused by the motorbikes that reliable drones (flown appropriately) would probably be welcomed, after the usual uncertainty period.

"flown appropriately" would imply restricting the drones to the kind of shot that is already provided in generous quantity by helicopters. They'd want to keep the motos for the same reason they haven't gone helicopter-only.

Also, the low hanging fruit would not be getting rid of the very few TV motos, it would be reducing the high number of mostly redundant photojournalism motos.

> "flown appropriately" would imply restricting the drones to the kind of shot that is already provided in generous quantity by helicopters.

Actually, I'd argue differently. I'd imagine the greatest risk of injury from a drone would be it failing and falling from a significant height (i.e. similar shots as provided by helicopters). However, I'd envisage they could do a great job providing images/video from (say) 15-20 metres away - close enough to replace the video motorbikes and not present a great risk in the unlikely event of failure, but far enough to not interfere - and probably interfere less than the motorbikes currently do.

> Also, the low hanging fruit would not be getting rid of the very few TV motos, it would be reducing the high number of mostly redundant photojournalism motos. Agree; but it can't be beyond the wit of man to outfit a drone to take decent quality stills?

I'm sure the riders would prefer drone buzzing over getting run down by motorbikes.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/motorbike-driver-ejected-fro...

Drone buzzing followed by a crash on the road would certainly not be preferable to a blunt bump with a motorcycle followed by a crash on the road.

A minor motorcycle bump would also be quite recoverable, not much different from contact with a peer which is a routine occurrence in racing, far from being inevitably followed by a crash. A "minor drone buzzing"? I don't think so.

For professional drone pilots that kind of flying would be a piece of cake. Then the fixed-wing becomes a bi-directional relay for the drone control. The motorcycles seem to crash or cause crashes every year...

The drones also can't provide drafts for the French GC riders :-)

No way they could match the situational awareness of a motorcycle rider who's there, moving on the same mechanical medium, following the same vehicle physics as the athletes, ideally even being a former pro cyclist who's experience would not transfer remotely as well to stone piloting as from one kind of bike to another.

And still, moto/cyclist crashes happen and replacing them with drone/cyclist would be worse.

Drones can fly above and to the side, providing excellent viewing angle. The path can even be precomputed. What’s the issue?

You are replying in a subthread concerning replacing the motorcycle camera operators with drones, not the helicopters. If you can precompiled the order and behaviour of the cyclists then you can make a lot of money gambling on the race this year...

Yes, I'm talking about replacing the motorcycles. Drones can fly close enough to get basically the same footage as motorcycles. Yes, the pace is not precomputable, but the path definitely is. For professional drone pilots, that is huge, because if the path is known but the pace isn't it reduces the entire piloting effort down to a one dimensional instruction. And there's no need to have only one drone.

The motorcycles are an eyesore, they interfere with the race, and they emit noxious gasses for the athletes to breathe. Replacing them with drones seems like the thing to do.

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