Consumer drones are coming, and they will change everything

http://gigaom.com/2013/12/01/consumer-drones-are-coming-and-they-will-change-everything/

by WardPlunet • 13 years ago

31 43 13 years ago

gigaom.com

noiv• 13 years ago

Clicked link, searched for airworthiness, came back to comment.

Jxnathan2• 13 years ago

"It's illegal to use drones to make money." Any specific reasoning behind this?

Sanddancer• 13 years ago

Probably for similar reasons why you need a commercial pilot license. If you're going to be doing it for money, you should have more training than someone just going to wal-mart and picking up a drone. However, as such a training regimen has not been defined yet, the FAA has decided that it's safer just to say it's off limits for now.

Personally, I'd love to see more effort into setting up such a commercial program, as there are a lot of dangerous jobs that could be made safer through drones. For example, there are dozens of crop duster accidents each year where someone's injured or killed. Pulling someone out of the pilot seat, and onto the ground can make that job a lot safer and more accurate. But, we can't get there until we do the studies to figure out how to do such safely.

Jxnathan2• 13 years ago

It's odd that you can fly them around the city and bump into buildings freely, but when the money aspect is implemented it somehow changes everything. A sandwich or other small food delivery service seems innocent enough.

thatthatis5• 13 years ago

Beginning airline pilots are paid dogfood wages, approved to fly commercially, and have about half the week off. Could they fly drones for profit?

asynchronous13• 13 years ago

It's legacy.

The FAA has a distinction between commercial and recreational flying. When the laws were written, commercial meant that you were carrying passengers in a full-sized aircraft. And it makes sense to have more rigid rules in place for passenger aircraft.

Times have changed and using commercial vs recreational doesn't make sense anymore. The FAA is trying to apply existing laws to new technology. So, we're left with the case that it's perfectly legal to put a camera on a toy RC aircraft and take pictures for fun. But if you sell those pictures now you've crossed into commercial territory and your flight was no longer legal.

edit The good news is that the FAA is working on new rules. They're just miserably slow about it.

jjwiseman2• 13 years ago

Just a few weeks ago the FAA released its roadmap for new UAV regulation where they discuss some of their plans for regulating commercial activity: http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/uas/media/uas_roadmap_2...

Lots of people have been waiting years for this, and are still waiting for more detail, from drone startups (check AngelList to see how many have started in the past year) to guys wanting to sell aerial photography services.

bambax• 13 years ago

The article is shallow, but the title is right! I have a DJI Phantom (1) with a GoPro attached to it, and it's fantastic. What's fantastic also is that since the arrival of the Phantom 2, the price of model 1 has dropped by about 40%.

It's a really cool machine because it flies high and far away (unlike the Parrot which is just a toy).

ck22• 13 years ago

If you think cheap drones for consumers won't be abused, note there are many thousands of incidents of people purposely pointing green lasers at aircraft in the USA each year.

Estragon2• 13 years ago

Why is pointing a laser pointer at a plane a big deal?

krapp• 13 years ago

It can blind the pilots.

ck22• 13 years ago

The beams is meters wide at that height.

It is a federal crime and hundreds of people are arrested each year and growing but idiots keep doing it - they even light up the police helicopters that come to look for them.

crbnw00ts• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasers_and_aviation_safety

Ensorceled• 13 years ago

Apparently it's because a large number of people don't think it's a big deal ...

thatthatis5• 13 years ago

I can't wait for the drone delivery businesses to pop up.

Food from across town, delivered hot in 15 minutes. EBay now: now only $.75 per delivery thanks to near zero human delivery labor.

Couple a drone quad copter with a google self driving car and we've got the makings of an excellent robot slave industry.

purringmeow2• 13 years ago

I've always fancied the idea of drone-waiters. There won't be any need of truck/cab drivers soon too.

A lot of jobs will be lost in the future, because of automation. I don't know if that's good or not, however.

thatthatis5• 13 years ago

Every time human labor is replaced by machines this question gets asked. So far, over many centuries, the answer has unequivocally been: over the long run, replacing humans with machines is incredibly good. The bad is short lived but real - people have to switch jobs, often for lower work because they are too old to amortize new skills training.

Short of skynet, I celebrate humans being supplanted.

Futurebot2• 13 years ago

It's starting already:

Sushi drone restaurant: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2013/jun/1...

Domino's testing drone delivery: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on4DRTUvst0

TacoCopter seemed like a joke not all that long ago. No longer.

r0s• 13 years ago

This is really no more of a change then telephoto lenses.

Cool as hell, but a flying security camera is hardly revolutionary.

atmosx• 13 years ago

If one of those things, for whatever reason, blacks-out and kills someone they will be permanently banned.

A way around this would be to permit them to fly above specific areas, via predetermined, controlled routes, that pedestrians should avoid to minimize the risk of accidents.

But the technology for the police (or any authority) to ID those vehicles and control what they are transporting (or state of transporting) it's already here, someone needs to put the pieces together and it's ready to go.

joering2• 13 years ago

Um, as long as government gives permission, one death will be only statistics and won't make a change.

Only this thanksgiving there was a little girl (civilian) killed by mistake in Afganistan by US drone (I cannot find news on it somehow).

This is a good read as well:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-afghan-civilians-killed-by-...

Sharlin• 13 years ago

Oh, but that was a brown person somewhere far away. Everybody knows those aren't real people.

ChuckMcM2• 13 years ago

So much more they could have said but did not. When do we see the first set of drones that fly into AT&T Park and land on a ledge somewhere letting someone outside the park watch the game? When do we have a drone at 399' run out of charge and fall down doing property damage or injuring someone and the owner never claims their drone back? When do we get Papparazi chasing celebrity weddings with drones? (I believe I read a report of this already, at least on the property of a celebrity). Fly it up to the roof of your target at night and then just settle in for a day's worth of filming? And of course when will we have a bad actor use a drone to assassinate a world leader or opposition leader, flying up to them and detonating a small directional charge.

Yes, they are going to change everything and it will be equal parts good and bad. I expect them to end up being illegal for non law enforcement to own.

reeses• 13 years ago

There is a mechanism in place in almost any country to regulate aviation based on location, craft capabilities, and operator certification based on supervised experience.

jotm4• 13 years ago

DIY drone makers could care less if they really want to do some damage. Buy some junk on eBay, have half a brain and you get yourself a flight worthy drone.

evanrich• 13 years ago

Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen paint a pretty scary picture for drones in their book The New Digital Age. They predict a similarity between how terrorists and guerrilla warriors use cheap consumer technology now, such as cell phones in IEDs, and how they might use drones in the future as their prices continue to drop. "Imagine [a drone] that is fitted with a homemade bomb on its undercarriage, producing a whole new level of domestic terror that is just around the corner."

jotm4• 13 years ago

It would be rather easy to attach a proper gun to the drone, with a targeting system and auto firing mechanism (already put in real world use in civilian hands: http://tracking-point.com/ ; http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/17000-linux-powered-r...). Sure, the tech needs to be smaller, but that' won't be a problem soon.

Now that's a scary assassination tool, and if properly camouflaged you can't stop it until it's too late (or drone flight is completely banned).

Futurebot2• 13 years ago

How about insect-sized assassination drones? http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/06/wha...

Excerpt:

"Not bee drones, rather drone drones, with military and terrorist capabilities. There is already a (foiled) terror plot using model airplanes. How easy would it be to stop a mechanical “bee” which injects a human target with rapidly-acting poison?"

ChuckMcM2• 13 years ago

Well you can fantasize of course :-) Actual small flyers with both useful range and telemetry are still science fiction. The number to watch is the energy density / energy consumption ratio. Dragonfly like devices can currently get airborne and fly a few 10s of meters, but that is without any cargo capacity at all.

Not that someday it won't happen, rather that today you could carry a 12 ga shotgun shell around with a camera that lets you see where you are. All of that tech is 'off the shelf' today. Hence the more immediacy of the change.

dfischer• 13 years ago

On a related topic check out the following libraries to program your 'drones':

http://www.artoo.io

http://www.cylon.js

http://gobot.io/

jjwiseman2• 13 years ago

https://github.com/felixge/node-ar-drone (powers my in-browser air traffic drone augmented reality app: http://lemondronor.com/blog/indexphp/2013/5/augmented-realit...)

mentos• 13 years ago

I'd be upset to see drones banned from our airspace before we get to realize their full potential for good.

If this happens I think in-home drone solutions could still provide very cool solutions. I'm sitting here on my couch and I could sure use a drink :P

jotm4• 13 years ago

I think they're already mostly banned - RC copters have been around for a while.

I struggle to see what they can be used for right now - maybe in the future, with a robotic hand attached to it, it can clean my roof :-), but right now it's just an expensive toy.

coldcode• 13 years ago

These days everything changes everything. It's a dreadful phrase that should be retired.

sean-duffy• 13 years ago

The idea of legislation concerning civilian 'drone' use concerns me for one reason: if there was such legislation, where would the line be drawn between a 'drone' and a recreational RC aircraft? Could this effectively outlaw an entire hobby?

Consumer drones are coming, and they will change everything

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