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Commercial Drone Industry Heating Up
DeviceGuru writes "In light of the FAA's recent approval of two unmanned drones for commercial operation in U.S. airspace, it's interesting to see the bits and pieces for building commercial UAVs falling into place. For example, Airware demonstrated its line of autopilot computers for UAVs this week at AUVSI Unmanned Systems 2013 in Washington DC. The devices include multi-rotor capabilities, and support various radios, GPS and inertial systems, servo interfaces, and onboard interfaces such as USB and CAN. The autopilot controllers run a configurable, royalty-free AirwareOS embedded Linux OS, making them amenable to considerable customization. Adding to that, Airware recently received $10.7 million in funding from Google Ventures and several other investors. This raises the question of what's next for the fledgling commercial drone industry."
Search and destr... uhhh... rescue! That's it...
And maybe crop dusters to eradicate cannabis.. er.. I mean.. bol weevils
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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"You damn drones get off my lawn!"
Well isn't this ironic... you tech nerds have been going on and on about how Microsoft is big brother for 20+ years now. Now it's the beloved Linux who will be looking down from above.
I can't wait for one of these things to take out an airliner or power line.
*no, I don't actually want to see people die in a crash or old folks die from lack of AC, but... you just know it's going to happen
How are any of these things airworthy? Fly by wire airplane require triple redundant data buses and flight computers. They have multiple sensors fusing location data. Granted, they kill 300+ people at a time, but there are a lot fewer real airplanes than people want of these hazards. The safety case just isn't there to allow these things to fly with a single line of sight link, unless they have on-board radar for collision avoidance and redundant flight computers. Otherwise, they're just a menace that are appropriate only for shooting hellfires at brown people.
...to shoot them down! Oh, & to sell the means to do so. I mean, I don't want a quiet read on my back porch interrupted by someone else's droning drone. Would you?
The other aspect is liability for the ones that crash, just suppose one starts a fire somewhere in a national park or on private land. Some of them are big enough that they could give you a really good hair cut to say the least.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Do you know that FAA prevents international carriers from being able to fly people within national US borders?
So if you are a Swiss airline, as an example, if you fly to New York, let passengers off your plane, pick up some passengers and then fly to Los Angeles and pick up more passengers, if your plane has empty seats on that NY to LA flight, you are prohibited by FAA to pick up national passengers (people who just want to go from NY to LA).
Isn't it amazing? FAA allows commercial operation of drones in USA space, (eventually armed drones, of-course), but they will not allow competition to help people, when they are already in fact hurting with the insane amount of inflation created by the Fed, which translates into higher and higher prices in fuel, maintenance, etc.
It should be amazing. FAA shouldn't even exist, there shouldn't be a government agency allowing or preventing people from flying passengers OR from flying unarmed drones for that matter, but wait, the international lines will still be not allowed to fly passengers on national routes but drones will eventually have weapons on them.... for security, to fight the terrorists and for the children of-course.
You can't handle the truth.
Fedex drones, Google Streetview Drones, Pizza Delivery Drones, Banner-toting advertisement drones, Summons serving drones, etc etc..
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
While that sucks do remember that is to keep american run airlines in business. No one really realizes just how much protectionism the government does to keep"american capitalism " in business. The USA as a country can't compete as we are so top heavy with managements.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I have a feeling that Apple and Samsung's drones might shoot at each other.
Except that's nonsense. If FAA and USA government cared to keep American airlines in business, they wouldn't be blocking the merger of two of them at this point, which is probably the only way to keep at least one of them operational. I wrote about it here.
What you are saying is not true, it's not about "keeping American airlines in business", it's about creating a monopoly and keeping prices up artificially where consumers would be much better served if there was more competition. There is an insane amount of regulations, rules, taxes that are crammed down the throats of American businesses by the collectivist socialist/fascist government, which uses the lowest common denominator - the dumbest and the biggest crowd, the mob, to justify its power grab. The mob gives the government the ability to exercise unauthorised powers and then the top politically connected people and the bottom 50 or so percent gang up together against the people who are in between those two extremes. So the real middle class gets destroyed - the businesses that are not politically connected, the people who are in fact providing most of the real products and services and jobs, the ones who actually hold the economy together.
Eventually they will destroy that small fraction of the population and only the poor and the top 0.001%, those with the political power will remain.
All this protectionism does not keep American airlines running, it destroys all American business eventually. Of-course it starts with the Federal reserve, IRS, FDIC, FBI, NSA, all of the departments, from energy and education, to commerce and agriculture and interior and housing banking and war, you name it.
The government ends up destroying all of the economy in the long run and people believe that the government should be doing something to "protect US ran airlines and other businesses in the short run", this is the real short term thinking, the kind that /. crowd likes to accuse corporations of, not even understanding that they are absolutely complicit.
You can't handle the truth.
The trouble is, we have all been exposed, in fact over-exposed, to drone-use-abuse. For it our first thoughts go to abusive uses drones could be put to. Uses such as law "enforcement", spying, paparazzi-platforms, gangster-rub-out "torpedo" use, as the CIA and Obama Admin have made notorious, etc.
In fact, there are probably almost as many legitimate uses for ariall drones, or remotely operated arial vcehicles (ROAVs) as there are for submarine drones, or remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROUVs). Air being a cinoressible fluid, and so providing less stability, there are fewer direct tool-application uses likely for arial drones, but there are inspection uses, fire-watch, data-collection uses (balloon ROAVs are used for this already), storm-meltdown-accident, etc. site reconnaisance, rescue location (to find victims, etc.) and plain old-fashioned pilotless cargo-transport uses, as we've seen in rockets for decades.
Bear in mind that rocketry began as a drone-operation activity, and most rockets today are still operated as unmanned vehicles. Until the space-shuttles, most manned rockets were remotely operated, or remotely supervised even where operators and controls were on board. Yes, some rockets, some whole classes of rockets, from V-1s to the things the CIA uses to do gangster-style rub-outs from UAVs, are abuse-purposed ROVs. But their being so does not define all rocket vehicles, or rocket uses as evil. It's the users who are evil.
Just as we should with guns, we should legislate to keep drones out of the hands of abusers, including police forces, spying agencies, gangsters, governmental or otherwise, papperazzi, private detective agents, ex-spouses and lawyers, to name a few.
Thousands of wives following their husbands on nights out with the boys.
Video cameras can be destroyed with a pen laser. Fly over my house and I guarantee you will be buying a new camera each flight. If one can kill a mosquito with lasers a drone will be child's play.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
A company presently being driven with human vision that is being set up to run completely without the need for human input, with driverless cars and pilotless aircraft shivers me timbers. Of course manning the sea, robotically, will be quintessential to complete this quest. ARG!
Our local PD here in South Carolina has been using aerial drones without approval for months now. They have been spotted around town at dusk due to their lighting. Sometimes they hover over the ghetto, and sometimes they fly over the lake, presumably looking for people drinking on boats.
But, the point is, they can't be the only ones.
...will soon be an investor's wet dream?
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
There's a reason private pilots aren't allowed to fly manned aircraft over urban airspace. If there aren't rules restricting the use of drones in cities to licensed operators with lots of insurance, there will be. I doubt it'll ever be economical for pizza delivery.
As soon as they put these drones, aka big skeet, up there us hillbillies will use them as targets. No humans will be harmed during this sport!!!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
Now that the Internet elite (Andreessen and Google Ventures) are in the game, expect to see more articles about this company and not necessarily the drone industry. Heck it would be nice to see some performance specs considering 3D Robotics is doing nearly the same for 1/8 the costs of these units and Hoverfly or Procerus (now lockheed) does it for 20% less..