I was talking about the concept of using Parrot drones or helicopters to do news footage and get views above crowds with a guy who has an autonomous helicopter. He quickly burst the concept by pointing out to me that his autonomous helicopter has a 6 foot diameter rotor made of carbon fiber. Or in his words "If I lost control of it over a crowd, what damage do you think two samurai swords coming in at 30 mph could do to a bunch of people? People that fly drones over crowds are assholes". (his words, but I thought they were worth noting)
A Parrot drone is much smaller, but I still wouldn't want to be hit with one, spinning propellers and all. I had one and found it hard to control with any wind in the area.
It sounds like basing your drone on a blimp could be practical. It's going to stay reasonably steady, and it can stay up for a long time with a fairly large payload. Also, no big moving parts to decapitate people.
It feels very much like being there. It probably feels even more so when you are working the controls. Perhaps this could be provided to shut-in invalids, or as tourism. Rather than flying their bodies to the other side of the world, customers would sit at home controlling copters over the Internet. That would require adding some automated evasive protections.
they're famous for challenging law officers etc to get hits on the videos, they've done similar stuff in the US, mind you.
It's unclear if they're allowed to go back to the US right now, as they got gear confiscated and got jailed/sent back once.
I doubt the french cops really care, but purposefully attempting to annoy officers is probably not a very good idea with or without a drone that is ;)
>I'm disappointed that so many cowards are watching our videos, being afraid of government taking away your liberties at the first sign of you using them. grow a pair
Since it's been shot atLeweb 2012 it's probably more of a demonstration than a stealth flight like they did in NY http://youtu.be/M9cSxEqKQ78
Regarding the law it's a bit more complicated, owning one isn't a problem (Parrot is selling his stuff without troubles), but as for using it, you need to:
- have a direct visual on it
- no flight above 50 meters
as for a fly by video:
- Must be at least 15 Km between uav and closest airfield
- only allowed above unpopulated zone
- no flight above 50 meters
Note that its almost infinitely cheaper to hide a camera on the group than to put the camera in the air. Or just peek thru the curtains in a window. Fooling around with non-R/C people using a R/C vehicle has been frowned upon in the R/C community since the 70s due to obvious danger and liability, so its much more likely your flying buddies will ostracize you or turn you in resulting in a human intel victory rather than exotic technological means tracking you down via doppler D/F techniques or whatever.
It doesn't even have to be a human error. Birds in/near cities are happy to attack R/C models. If you see your model you can run away from them, but if you only have the camera view, you won't see what's happening.
Now think that even slightly cracked propeller will easily break off at 10k+ rpm. When this happened for me, piece of the propeller ended up ~10cm under the surface of slightly frozen ground. Fortunately it flew straight down after it broke - I believe it could be lethal if it hit some person instead.
TL;DR, even if you don't make a mistake and can't see a mechanical fault, flying R/C models can be very dangerous. Flying close to people is irresponsible even if you're experienced with controlling them.
A Parrot drone is much smaller, but I still wouldn't want to be hit with one, spinning propellers and all. I had one and found it hard to control with any wind in the area.