Drone Pilot Fights for Right to Profit in the Unmanned Skies
wired.com
wired.com
Listen to the radio traffic from a typical residential house fire, and you'll find a non-trivial amount of the traffic is simply people trying to explain what they're seeing from their vantage point (e.g. changing smoke/fire conditions on the rear of the structure, imminent collapse of a portion of the roof, etc).
A multirotor with a gimbeled camera orbiting a few dozen meters above the scene could dramatically improve the chief officer's visibility of the event, increasing safety, and allowing for better tactical decisions.
This article lays out some of the largest issues I've run into.
And you want to fly these vehicles not only in densely populated (residential) areas, but in and around disaster and emergency situations?
I can see it being used as a tool by emergency response, but if I was a first responder and someone did that on my site I'd do what I could to get it down and stopping endangering everyone present.
The recent NYC drone crash brings the major issues right to the surface; safety. Unfortunately, it's only going to get worse without regulation. I wish that weren't the case. A license that isn't to hard to get should be required within city limits.
All that said the next issue that comes up is privacy. It's too early to know how bad this issue will become. On top of all the technical hurdles to flying, there is no way around the fact that drones are noisy. Most of the time, I am flying a multicopter in public people come over and talk to me about them. After they get over the sheer amusement of watching it fly, one of the first things they want to express is the potential for this thing to violate their privacy. Ironically, the government is actively running an extensive spying program on them, but their fears seem targeted on little Timmy down the street flying out side their window. This is obviously irrational.
Remember the Internet was not allowed to engage in commerce which was understandable as it was in research development back then. Took an Act of Congress to move it along.
I can see this happening hopefully but within a reasonable regulatory framework. How reasonable remains to be seen.
More a rhetorical question concerning stupid policies from two separate government agencies.
ref: http://www.indiewire.com/article/ida_issues_amicus_brief_on_...
I have a commercial-grade (several $k) multirotor designed for large cameras as well as two couple gopro-scale helis and fixed wing platforms, and I have to admit that based on some hardware failures (not pilot error, I can admit those) that I've experienced, I've gotten pretty leery of flying in some of the situations that people seem to want to use these most: sporting events, parades, concerts, weddings, etc. They simply aren't that reliable yet, and beyond that pilot skill is highly variable. Just because you can scrape together $1k to buy or build a multirotor doesn't mean you're fit to fly one anywhere near another human.
I've also flown full-scale aircraft, and while I tend to be suspicious of regulation, I do believe that some degree of oversight is necessary to do this safely, and that has been demonstrated in commercial aviation. Some type of demonstrated proficiency and equipment standards would go a long way towards making sure that this can be done safely. If we don't do something like that, I'm afraid that a few bad incidents are going to make this something that could become entirely illegal at any kind of small scale (i.e. nothing smaller than a Predator fielded by a well-connected corporation), which would be a terrible loss.
Privacy is a whole different issue, and something that I think has been blown out of proportion in comparison to the safety aspects, which are my main concern...
They can be dangerous and can fall out of the sky with disastrous and fatal results.
http://gothamist.com/2013/09/06/teen_killed_by_remote_contro...
60years ago fatal crashes happened in cars without crumple zones, poor firewalls, and no over shoulder seatbelts, etc. Regulation has mandated changes in those areas.
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/scary-hexa-crash-in-braz...
http://www.rightthisminute.com/video/mikrokopter-drone-crash...
http://betabeat.com/2013/08/renegade-drone-crashes-into-groo...
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/222088/video-dr...
In the first, third, and last cases the vehicles pretty much crashed into people. Two appeared to be equipment failures. The first looked like a GPS failure, the latter was a motor failure. I have two unexplained equipment-related crashes with my large Cinestar hexarotor, which has been enough to make me decide to never fly near other people.
And while RC drivers like to downplay the "drone" aspect, many pilots are hopelessly dependent on GPS position hold, in which case the vehicle essentially IS a drone, and is flying autonomously. When that malfunctions, bad things happen.
I have never heard of a single accident, yet everyone wants to regulate them heavily, even in situations where only the participants in their usage are at risk, like the boat video linked in that article.
They really only need to worry about defining privacy limitations. It should be okay to film in public spaces or private spaces where you are authorized to film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_711646...
They use a drone in lieu of the crazy camera crane and gantry thingies, and get some pretty awesome shots.
I suspect that drones are going to really transform the way we make low- to mid- budget shoots.
I'm loathe to allow the FAA more authority over the little guys--this sort of anti-drone stuff really will only impact hobbyists and makers. The rest of the folks, the ones who can actually profit off of mass surveillance and whatnot, the .gov's and BigCos, they are going to do it anyway.
The term 'drone' doesn't really have a clear meaning other than the pilot is not inside the vehicle. It doesn't refer to the formfactor (fixed wing / helicopter / multirotor) the flight controls (line-of-sight / FPV / autonomous) or even weight classifications.
If the drone takes off from the farm, lands on the farm, and in between stays within the boundary of the farm and stays low enough to not intrude on the airspace where manned planes can legally fly, is it still subject to FAA regulation?
Often these places are pretty lax though, and if you already have clearance to fly a private aircraft there you can just advise your ATC and go from there.
If you're concerned about that, you have to get a CoA, and then the language of the CoA itself will outline who you have to notify, where you can/can't fly and what altitudes.
Similarly, if an aircraft suddenly falls from the sky and lands on my head, my death would be a slightly happier affair for my family, so long as they know the person charged with it's stewardship was also killed (or at least injured) by the accident.
Even though a robot, or hybrid system of remote and autonomous flight control might prove to be statistically more reliable, I find it preferable when the burden of having lives hang in the balance is shared equally among all participants, even when the human in control might be feeling drunk and slightly suicidal on some grey Monday morning, perhaps after a recently emerging from a messy, dehumanizing divorce.
Am I alone in feeling oddly reassured by this grim social contract?
That's not really the point of the article though. The article is (mostly) talking about small (a few kg) battery operated machines that even in the hands of a seriously irresponsible operator are unlikely to cause any mass carnage.
When it isn't one of those ordinary things, that certain predictability pretty much goes out the window. I don't find the idea of adding remote control aircraft to my list of normative conditioned responses to flying things particularly appealing.
In my gut, I have an instinct to smash mysterious flying things that I perceive as threatening, regardless of how rational that perception is. When a bug flies too close to me (and especially my ears), my reptilian brain takes over, and demands swift, brutal action. It's that same sort of fear that Hitchcock tapped into with The Birds.
I grew up around farm fields with crop dusters, and those didn't bother me growing up, because I could see the guy inside the bubble dome cockpit, and wave to him, and he'd wave back sometimes, right before dive-bombing potato beetles with insecticide.
But take away the pilot from that equation, and I don't feel the same. The degree of investment from my conscience changes, and the air craft enters a new realm of human perception. It's private property, sure, but it's set in motion with uncertain intent.
When people make sport of these unmanned flying things (and they certainly have: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/18/colorado-town-p...), I understand the sentiment of that stance. It's something mysterious flying over your head, and at a personal level, that taps into some specific emotions that aren't easy to part with.
This is also helps explain why drone attacks (missiles too) to kill terrorists, and so on, are so hated and seen as cowardly. If such people are killed like Bin Laden was, then that feels more acceptable than a drone strike, because in that sort of scenario, there is a man on man thing. There is a sort of honor to it.
I personally very much dislike US incursion in to foreign countries to kill people. However, when OBL was killed, I did think, well at least men on the ground got their hand dirty and took personal risk to do it. Much more honor to that than some drone jockey sitting safely in a bunker thousands of miles away risking nothing what so ever, like a kid playing some console game.
Something else. Many find it more irritating to be caught speeding by a speed camera than a police man in a police car. Similar sort of thing.
Bottom line: electronics, robots and automated system are superior to us, which is why they are used. Very simply, it is not fair. There is no sporting chance for us second rate humans.
Similarly, if an aircraft suddenly falls from the sky and lands on my head, my death would be a slightly happier affair for my family, so long as they know the person charged with it's stewardship was also killed (or at least injured) by the accident."
If the cause of the accident is pilot error, then sure. But what about everyone else who has direct impact on the safety of your flight (i.e. mechanics, air traffic control, etc). They share much of the responsibility for the soundness of your aircraft, but are only restrained by their conscience and possible legal recourse.
But the decision to step over the threshold and place the airframe in a circumstance of danger rests with the pilot. The pilot possesses the choice and power to throttle up, and take flight. Regardless of prior certainties and ambiguities, a pilot makes the decision, estimates the risk and rolls the dice. The plane is in the air because of the pilot's direct action, even if decisions are made based on proxied information from inspectors or ground control.
The passengers, too, roll the dice by delegating control over their lives to the pilot. They've chosen to accept the implicit risks that the pilot has assessed.
People on the ground also collectively acquiesce to the risk of having planes over head. When we don't agree with the idea, sometimes the only way to settle matters is with anti-aircraft artillery.
So we do have a form of choice regarding whether or not UAVs are permitted over head. How the enforcement of such "authority" and "regulations" takes place might become it's own beast.