Friend is a site supervisor for a pretty big GC up here in Seattle - They used to pay a pilot a few hundred bucks every time to fly over job sites to take aerial photography.
He decided one month w/o telling the bosses to spend the money on a $500ish drone with a decent camera attached and cancel the pilot flights.
Showed the foreman the capabilities of the little drone, which quickly made it's way up the chain, and now one pilot is out of a recurring job.
And yet here we stand on the cusp of creating a whole new breed of pilots who are ready willing and able to follow simple common-sense rules for UAV aviation, creating a new sector of jobs that didn't exist before. Jobs that get the same results without all of the negative safety and environmental externalities of flying giant tin kites with primates stuffed inside.
Just make up your minds and tell us the rules already.
> Just make up your minds and tell us the rules already.
This is a bit off topic, but this is something that I've spent a lot of my life being worried about. I'm pretty sure that most people don't really understand what rules even are. Effectively they want two rules 1) things I like are good and 2) things I don't like are bad. However, you cant just come out and say that because of other social reasons.
Back on topic. I work in a 'nice' place in Indiana and recently there have been 35-45ish year olds wearing business casual showcasing their drone like remote control flying machines to their 35-45ish year old, business casual wearing friends. Additionally, growing up I went to church with a guy who ended up recently graduating college with some sort of piloting degree (sorry I dont know any of the details besides "he went to college to be a pilot"). He's now going to be a police man of some sort reportedly because recent piloting regulatory changes have made it even harder to make a living as a pilot.
With these two anecdotes in mind, my guess is that the chaotic social fabric that rules our lives will decide in favor of the UAVs and against manned aerial vehicles.
Why would this new breed of pilot be reliant on someone else to provide simple common-sense rules? The problem isn't the a absence of rules, but rather the presence of rules explicitly prohibiting commercial UAV work.
The rules we have now are not common-sense. They really amount to a refusal to consider the idea at all. It seems like they are saying "you can't fly until we decide" and then they refuse to address the issue.
Drones have the potential for large abuses by bad actors in areas like privacy and safety so there should probably be some rules governing them. An autonomous, GPS guided, flying his-res camera is a new thing for human society. Its got lots of positive and negative potential. We need to manage the negatives so we can get the benefits of the positives.
by the time the rules are made up why will we need pilots? Recreational and low tech UAVs sure, but for jobs similar to the article, checking power lines, or even just updating maps, piloted UAVs may have a very short life in the face of automation
Remember this is something that's happening constantly due to the use of automated technologies. Beware of blaming others just because their effects were more visible. It's something that everyone working in new technologies (even just as a user) should think about.
In fact, I'd say this case is actually one of the more benign. The environmental advantages of flying a quadcopter versus a full plane or helicopter alone are tremendous.
i work for a big cm and our use of airplane photography has plummeted in the last few years: not because of drones (yet), but because google earth is good enough for a good portion of our needs.
I thought this was going to be a story about how your friend got rewarded for taking initiative and revolutionizing that particular aspect of the business.
I initially thought, "no way bro, contractors will swallow up the savings as additional profit!"
But then I realized that since construction contracts go through a bidding process, the cost of building is a "cost based price". Buildings really may become a little bit cheaper from this. That's awesome :)
Also, since the price is lowered for aerial photographs, demand will go up. I don't know what benefits aerial photographs bring to construction, but we are sure to see more of them.
owners often have outside financing they have to spend on the project or lose. they'll use that money to upgrade something else. ideally it would mean something to boost their standing in the community, like more public art or bike racks, but sometimes it's more marble in the executive shower.
The FAA is flushing a multi-billion dollar industry down the toilet with their ridiculous restrictions on this gigantic, growing drone craze. Most of these things weigh a couple pounds and are mostly harmless (definitely less than, say, a baseball hitting you). I'm glad I live in Europe.
Apparently they're writing specific norms for what and how they'll be usable legally (and most likely it'll require a license), but for now, it's a full ban.
My two newest ones both weigh in under 400g (a bit less than 1lb) ready to fly - fully loaded I could fly with 800 or 900g all up if I wanted to (they're a _lot_ less fun to fly loaded up like that though). They both use 5 or 6 inch props, usually plastic (though I do have some carbon fibre ones) which while they hurt a bit if you're careless are not super dangerous. I'd hesitate at calling them "mostly harmless" - you're right in that they're about as likely to cause damage in public as a baseball or frisbee - I think of them as about as dangerous as a kid on a bicycle.
A friend has a octocopter with eight 14inch carbon fibre props spun by 2kW motors which weighs in at over 6kg with all five cameras it usually flys with mounted.
Those _shouldn't_ be subject to the same rules - but the hobby/tech moves _way_ faster than the regulations, so while I disagree with it, I understand _why_ the restrictions need to first be based on the assumption that there are people flying unshrouded lawnmowers spinning blades capable of chopping heads off - because they _are_.
At least here in .au, there's strong evidence our local authorities are thinking about a graduated set of regulations (at least for "non commercial, hobby use"), where sub 0.5kg craft will be treated differently to 2kg and 5+kg craft.
You can shit on the US-FAA all you want. I enjoy the fact we have an FAA that errs on the side of caution and restraint until a technology is understood and all the implications sorted out.
That caution and care (in cooperation with an equally cautious NTSB) has created an airline industry in the USA that's 10 times per mile safer than driving in a car.
I shudder to think what air travel would be like if we had all adopted a "shoot first think later" attitude in the early days.
The early days of commercial aviation in the US were largely open and unregulated. The first serious governmental effort to regulate aviation in the US was in 1926, by which time it was clearly needed.
I don't know anyone who thinks the FAA should have no ability to regulate drones, but their unwillingness to draw limits for themselves is causing real problems. Noncommercial drones/model aircraft less than a certain weight and operating below 400 feet and not near an airport have always been legal. If hobbyists are safe to operate according to those rules for personal enjoyment, why should they be banned from operating under those rules for pay?
>The FAA is flushing a multi-billion dollar industry down the toilet with their ridiculous restrictions
Regulations follow the life with lag. AirBNB and Uber are most recent examples of "break the rules en-masse and thus force the rules change after". FAA will change their rules once a million drones will appear in the skies as they will just be not able to fine each and every aerial photographer. Until then it is just noise.
That is exactly what they are doing. It is infuriating to watch our potential US drone industry developing in Canada, Australia, Japan, etc., but not here.
I find interesting that people are more scared of the NSA and yet we have tons of people flying these around your neighborhoods and apartments and nobody bats an eye about your invasion of privacy.
Yes, still mostly harmless. Still comparable to playing baseball in a residential area.
As far as privacy goes, of course it's possible to violate privacy with a drone. But it's a lot more practical to violate privacy with a telescope or a camera with a zoom lens. The only thing a drone can get you is a shot of the roof or backyard, a really easy way to get spotted, and relatively short "mission" duration.
It's a concern, but can't you just set up a camera on the ground, or any number of other ways? The benefits of accessing the third dimension are far greater than the benefits of restricting it.
I odn't disagree but I think this is a bad argument.
> definitely less than, say, a baseball hitting you
Is it not quite common to see "No Ball games" signs in public places? I've seen a fair few in the UK. Obviously that's not a law but it's there to stop people going to the park to drive golf balls across the football pitch.
Have you seen pictures of what drone props can do to skin? Even the handheld drones draw blood easily. The $500 phantoms can cause damage requiring stitches... Not sure a baseball is the best analogy.
The drone lacerations may be a flashier image for a photograph, but baseball injuries are nothing to dismiss. Also note that all of the drone injury pictures I have seen are from the drone owner accidentally throttling up while holding the drone, which is an incredibly easily avoidable mistake.
> That’s because most would classify the aircraft Evans and many other tinkerers are flying as a “drone.” Despite this definition being technically incorrect (more on that in a bit)...
This tired old semantic argument again. The word "drone" has been used to refer to unmanned remote controlled (or autonomous) aircraft at least since the 1950s. I'm pretty sure the term was used throughout WWII, but the earliest source I can find right now is from 1951:
I find it weird when press call what are basically kids playing toy helicopters 'drone operators'[1]. They are definitely playing on the negative connotations have with the word 'drone' which, as you point out, is closely associated with the military.
I obviously don't approve of blatant attempts to conflate toys with military aircraft, but that has little to do with the word "drone." The military "drones" aren't even officially called that. The reason we call military remote controlled aircraft "drones" isn't that they shoot missiles and kill people. It's because they are unmanned aircraft. We don't call manned military aircraft "drones," and they also kill people.
He decided one month w/o telling the bosses to spend the money on a $500ish drone with a decent camera attached and cancel the pilot flights.
Showed the foreman the capabilities of the little drone, which quickly made it's way up the chain, and now one pilot is out of a recurring job.
Thanks robots.