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Shivetya

so how long before

a) buying one puts you on a list

b) you are required a license to fly one, anywhere

c) you are required a license to buy, let alone fly one

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As someone who recently picked up the multi-copter hobby, I would say I want people to have to register/license these things. Previously I might have scoffed at the "flying lawnmower" meme, but it is absolutely the truth. Even the small 250mm mini sized quads are massively dangerous and the larger octocopters are downright scary. They move fast and 10" carbon fiber blades spinning at 8000rpm connected to a 5lbs drone could all but decapitate a human. One GPS glitch and the thing might go full speed toward your face, or a kid on a bike, or the neighbors dog / beamer / house. How much do you trust GPS and hobbyist open source flight control code? I trust it enough to fly around an empty park, but I'd never want it near my cat.

With the prices for entry level models coming low enough to compete with an ipad or other consumer electronics, I can't help but think how scared I would be of teenagers flying these things around my neighborhood, let alone the hazards with wide scale deployment of automated drones for deliveries.

My favorite battlebots story was from a teen who built a 'spinner' and early in their testing they lost a nut when the blade was in full spin. It left a hole in the siding of his garage as if someone had shot a bullet out of the house, 14" off the floor. Fortunately nobody was hurt. He did all future tests in a drained swimming pool.

Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage had their robot Blendo removed from competition twice because it was too dangerous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendo

This is just so awesome.

> early in their testing they lost a nut

I'm glad I read this till the end. For a moment there I was thinking the kid had actually lost, you know, one of his nuts.

I've been in the hobby for almost 2 years, and my impression is very nearly the opposite of yours. I think the danger of hobby-grade quads is almost universally overstated. They're dangerous, but not significantly more dangerous than kids playing baseball, and certainly nowhere near as dangerous as an automobile. I think your fears are unfounded.

Less dangerous than a car? Perhaps. Although I'd point out that we require licensure and insurance for cars, and the threat of life in prison if you injure anyone through neglect while operating a vehicle

Baseball? No. These are injuries from 450mm sized quads.[1][2][3]

warning some blood / injuries

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji3Hii_LZOc#t=20

[2] http://static.rcgroups.net/forums/attachments/7/5/2/8/2/a300...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocqB6_y71xE#t=6

Yes, spinning rotors can cut your skin if they make contact. That has to be weighed against the likelihood of spinning rotors and skin making contact. That likelihood is generally fairly low, but is much higher when a pilot deliberately flies straight at a person's head or throttles up the aircraft while holding it.

Baseball tends not to cause lacerations, so photographs won't look as gory (except perhaps for some eye injuries), but they definitely can cause serious injuries, and can very easily cause minor property damage.

A 700-sized heli can kill you, but I'm not sure that even a large drone would do as much damage: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2413231/Roman-Piroze...

I say this because the heli in the story, as most high-end consumer RC helis these days, had 2 carbon fiber blades, and on the 700 size, tip to tip on the blades is about a meter. Consider the weight and tip speed of each blade vs. A large quad or hex or octocopter. The blades will be much smaller, so much much less kinetic energy at the tips. You also don't do this with quads: http://youtu.be/EYWLqui5VsM

No, but you can do this with quads:

http://vimeo.com/68798774

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5eUqLopMYM&index=88&list=PL...

I have multiple(big,expensive) drones. I program them too.

I am not too worried about them, they are far safer than a real helicopter.

"One GPS glitch" ?? When something fails on a drone you could detect it very easily. If GPS fails you have barometric sensors, you have accelerometers, you have compass, you have gyroscopes, you have infrared sensors for horizon.

When something fails you actually reverse and disconnect the motors automatically. Now it is just 1 or 2 kilos falling down. Mine have small parachutes.

Like humans you could add redundancy to those machines, and the probability of all of them failing at the same time is almost zero.

Normal toy quadcopters weight 100 grams and you can stop the blades with your hands (or you neck) without harm.

Well its been "possible" for a long time (over 10 years) using fixed wing craft. My favorite was this story: (http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/model-airplan...) which talks about the guy who flew an RC model across the Atlantic in 2003.

That said, basic police work can still generally track the origin of a drone back to when it was built/sold. Every electronic component has a date code, and there are records of sales all along the way. That can tie it to a location/purchase, in store surviellance can often provide images of buyers, (mail/internet order is even easier) and get back to who had the drone to begin with.

At the end of the day, the higher the tech 'toys' used in a crime the easier it is for law enforcement to figure out who did it.

Every electronic component has a date code, and there are records of sales all along the way.

I have a feeling that if you buy your electronic components this way:

http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalog...

it's a bit harder to trace an individual component back to the purchaser. Especially something like this:

http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_1000...

No doubt. And if you were really trying to be stealthy you would open up an "e-waste" store and use it to collect things which you could scavenge parts out of. (would make for some good fiction as well). Thinks like GPS units are hard to get in junk bags, but easy to pick up at a recycling store out of an old phone (assuming it isn't part of the SOC). But the point remains that all of those things have 'tendrils' and the mosaic effect is very real.

Most of what you need to build an autonomous air vehicle is already in your phone: https://code.google.com/p/andro-copter What are you going to do, restrict brushless DC motors, LiPo batteries, carbon fiber tubing / ABS plastic, and small propellers (they still use wooden ones on some planes, which would also work on quads) ?

Please keep in mind, the USA is not the only supplier of these parts/components.

GL tracing a drone built from part kits bought of deal extreme or Ebay.

Most of those drones are built from general purpose electronics which even if they were original and no knock off which is very common these days they would've been bought from some reseller in bulk and no one actually tracks individual components.

While i agree that it's easy enough for a detective to go and ask around who has a drone but once you have enough of them flying around that won't be as simple either.

I think the big change has been in the autonomous navigation combined with the pre-assembled stuff that is really hard to crash unless you're trying. For a few grand now, you can get a more or less plug-and-play (or charge-and-fly) system capable of transporting a few pounds of cargo a dozen miles with a minimally trained operator and minimal assembly.

You could also use a big model rocket, but you can't buy a huge one off the shelf that works so reliably with little skill. RC subs would also be possible, but again, you'd need to do a lot of your own R&D, whereas companies like DJI now do it for you. Big RC helis have been capable of the same-ish payloads for a decade or more now, but they're hard to fly, hard to build, and require quite a bit of training to fly without crashing. You'd also need to be watching it every second in flight, unlike the self-stabilizing GPS waypoint systems which have become affordable (<$10k and available to non-military) in the past few years.

You can always build a multicopter with parts that are not specifically made for drones, so they cannot enforce this. And when you deal drugs, smuggling a drone is the easy part.

I'd imagine that 3D printing is already good enough to print most of a drone; the only things you'd need to order would be wires, a control board (arduino?) and motors.

You usually need something strong for the frame; big drones are carbon fiber - and I don't think you can print anything like it right now.

Other things on the parts list are the motor controllers (motors are controlled by current, and you usually need at least 40Amps for each), battery and sensor board (GPS, compass, 3D acceleration and gyro).

There's no need for carbon fiber, and besides, you can buy carbon fiber beams and poles that are used for much more than just RC aircraft. Any multirotor frame you can build with carbon fiber you could build with fiberglass, aluminum, or even wood and plastic without significant performance reduction that would be relevant to hauling drugs short distances.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:267008

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:171474

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:175073

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:241055

https://www.youmagine.com/designs/drone-race-w4-drw4

With the number of idiots that have already almost collided with commercial aircraft, I think the drug connection is the least of our worries.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/near-c...

This reminds of South Park episode on the drones: http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e05-the-magic-bush

you need a licence and permission to fly one in Spain already

How would they enforce this without tracking everything larger than a small bird via radar or satellite?

i dont know how they enforce it but its a law. Spanish law works different from most countrys. They have laws to say what you can do rather than what you cant. The law is you need a licence.

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