Personal Drones Fly Above Burning Man(spectrum.ieee.org)
spectrum.ieee.org
Personal Drones Fly Above Burning Man
http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/aerial-robots/personal-drones-fly-above-burning-man
19 comments
Burning Man/Black Rock Rangers had an orientation you had to attend to get permission to fly your own drone/quadrotor. I'm assuming you also had to agree to their photography policy, which I'm okay with as I don't want pictures of me riding my bicycle naked across the playa showing up on Flickr.
They probably had to also touch on the fact that many of them will be flying FPV (first-person-view) with a headset, so dealing with those if they're recorded as well (most aren't, so probably a non-issue).
All it will take is one UAV crashing into some people, resulting in horrific injuries, and the UAV will be banned, or more heavily regulated.
These UAV are not toys, and have a high potential to cause grave injuries.
These UAV are not toys, and have a high potential to cause grave injuries.
Remote-controlled model aircraft has been around for a long time, and I suspect there have been plenty of crashes and horrific injuries. I fail to understand why, all of a sudden, terms like "UAV" and "drone" are being used to describe aircraft which from a safety perspective are fundamentally very similar to RC aircraft decades ago. I do understand the privacy issues that have changed in the last decade due mostly to the miniaturization and price decrease of quality cameras, but safety doesn't seem to have worsened.
Absolutely, flying them over the people masses at Burning Man is definitely not a good idea. I operate UAVs commercially in Germany, and both my insurance and flight permit explicitly forbid overflight of people or animals.
However, even when not directly overflying people, responsible UAV operators take a number of safety precautions to ensure maximum operational safety of the devices. For example, using an octocopter instead of a quad would allow a motor and/or a propeller (and sometimes even two) to fail in flight without losing control. Another example are GPS-assisted autopilots, that can monitor and enforce safe flight envelope (distance, altitude) and return the aircraft to its starting location in case of radio signal loss or low battery charge.
However, even when not directly overflying people, responsible UAV operators take a number of safety precautions to ensure maximum operational safety of the devices. For example, using an octocopter instead of a quad would allow a motor and/or a propeller (and sometimes even two) to fail in flight without losing control. Another example are GPS-assisted autopilots, that can monitor and enforce safe flight envelope (distance, altitude) and return the aircraft to its starting location in case of radio signal loss or low battery charge.
I agree. Burning Man has evolved from a very unsafe event towards more safety. I doubt if we'll see any more blowing up oil derrick type events. Someone is still going to try to take down a drone though, especially if it appears to photographing naked people.
As long as the operator of the photographing UAV follows the same photography rules and guidelines as the people running around with cameras on the ground, I don't see a problem. Also, shooting down a UAV is a) illegal (property damage) and b) even more dangerous that the actual UAV operation, since a shot-down UAV will surely come down uncontrollably - the responsibility for that damage will then rest on the shooter.
Just as Burning Man is a test bed for civilian use of drones, it will also be a test bed for civilian anti-drone measures. These don't actually have to involve shooting it down, but people are already thinking about it
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/local-an...
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/local-an...
It's going to turn into an all out semi-fun war of drone counter measures (lasers, guns shooting plastic projectiles) and even drones battling other drones in the sky. This should be interesting.
I would imagine that a net-shooter would be the most effective weapon against drones. Plus, it's a weapon that could feasibly be operated from a drone itself without weighing too much, being too hard to aim, and minimizing human casualties if it missed.
I think radio jamming would be much cheaper and more effective. Most short-range RC aircraft run on very widely-available consumer spectrum bands like 2.4GHz.
Drones can operate completely autonomously, with no RF link.
Indeed, they can be programmed to follow GPS waypoints for example, but I don't think that's a common use case, especially for high production value photography/videography like the examples highlighted in the article. Perhaps it would become more common if radio jamming became more common.
Shooting down a drone is a criminal offense, property damage and all that. The UAV owner would be in the right to sue and win. Also, if it crashes on top of something as a result, the shooter would be responsible for that damage as well.
You could hit it with paint balls to blind the camera without bringing it down and you could probably get away with it.
Good luck hitting the lens on a moving UAV a couple dozen meters off the ground...
It'd be a worthy challenge, perhaps involving an electronic and/or laser guidance system. Edit: I'm not advocating this and I don't have the skills, but based on what I know about Burning Man attendees, I'm predicting it will happen.
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http://www.burningman.com/press/photo_guide.html
http://www.burningman.com/press/pressRandR.html#pressRR