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Sochi Drones Are Shooting the Olympics, Not Terrorists
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Rachel Feltman reports that drones are being used to film ski and snowboarding events at the Winter Olympics in Sochi and unlike military drones, which often look like a remote-controlled airplane, the creature floating around Sochi resembles a huge flying spider. The legs of the flying spider hold the rotors that spin around to keep it airborne. The drone then has a flight deck that holds the flight control system with GPS for navigation, sensors and receivers. The camera can be mounted in the middle or suspended below the flight deck. A drone with mounted camera can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $37,000 for a top-of-the-line Ikarus from Britain's Heliguy, which is advising broadcast clients in Sochi on using drones. That compares with the cost of a few thousand dollars an hour to rent a helicopter with pilot, not including the camera crew and equipment. Cameraman Remo Masina says he can fly a drone at up to 40 mph while transmitting a high-definition, live image and says the chances of drone crashes are close to zero when a drone is handled by an experienced pilot, because the drones are programmed to return to base at the slightest problem — such as a low battery, rough winds or a malfunction. 'There have been mishaps, however. In one case last year, a drone filming an imitation version of Spain's running of the bulls in Virginia crashed and injured a few spectators.'"
Ugh. Close to zero chance but then tells of crash.
Be fair - he said "close to zero when a drone is handled by an experienced pilot". We don't know who was flying the drone in that crashed in Virginia!
In addition, I'd rather have one of those drones crash than a helicoptor carrying pilot, cameraman, and such. The piloted craft is much larger and therefore more hazardous if something goes wrong(and it does semi-regularly).
I don't read AC A human right
So the cost of PURCHASING a drone is about the same as RENTING a helicopter for the same time? With the drone, of course, being re-usable, and creating significantly less impact when comparing the results of a potential crash, and can get much MUCH closer to the action.
This is seriously the best of all worlds. Now if only we can get away from the mainstream stigma of the term "Drone", such as going back to the term UAV instead? Really, the only down-side is ignorant media perception of these devices.
Also, it was an American drone. It might have been commandeered by the NSA to kill a suspected terrorist.
The use of helicams is not really new for television. I know that Survivor (a guilty pleasure, flame on) has been using them for years to get sweeping overhead shots that you may believe are from a helicopter. Also, most of the Korean shows that I watch that have outdoor scenes make extensive - perhaps to the point of overdoing it - use of these things.
I agree they're a great way to get impressive footage for relatively low cost, and it makes sense to use them for sport. Just thought I'd point out this is nowhere near revolutionary - just an opportunity to use "drone" and "Sochi" in the same story.
The one curious thing is that the low risk of failure is 'when the drone is handled by an experienced pilot'; but it is attributed to sophisticated auto-abort features in the drones' programming, something that presumably works without regard for who is at the controls.
I don't doubt that an experienced pilot helps, or that having a mechanism send the drone back to base if it detects the battery heading toward thermal runaway is a good idea, it just seems a very odd description.
The larger helicopters do have to stay further away, because of the noise(and sometimes local regulatory bodies); but they certainly will flatten whatever they fall on a great deal more forcefully(in the context of civilian helicopters 'light' still tends to mean a metric ton or more).
It probably doesn't hurt that a lot of the larger short-duration/high-stability drones are hexacopters or even octocopters. Losing an engine isn't going to do one of those any good; but with the onboard gyros and some clever coding by the Control Theory guy, the odds of at least achieving a relatively civilized crash aren't so bad.
A full size helicopter with that many independent engines would be consigned to the 'heroic freaks of history' category, and probably never actually see use.
Also, it was an American drone. It might have been commandeered by the NSA to kill a suspected terrorist.
In Virginia, it's probably also worth checking to see whether it was hunting season at the time or not...
Elmer Fudd using a drone to hunt Bugs Bunny? Dammit, I don't think I've seen that one yet.
A heading with "shooting", "drones", and "terrorists". That should put /. on the NSA's radar.
no, I don't have a sig
... there's always a chance of it coming down in the wrong place no matter how sophisticated. But I'll take being hit by a 10kg electric drone any day over a 1000kg chopper filled with kerosene.
Anonymous Coward, was a citation really necessary to make the point? And if it was, then you could have provided one yourself?
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
The automatic recover features are worth mentioning. It reduces the risk of danger due to human error, or signal loss: those are inevitable in a crowded environment with thousands of cameras and radio transmitters saturating the airwaves legally and illegally.
My concern would be about the ability to hijack the drones, and about getting the crowds used to low flying remote controlled aircraft. Similar, unauthorized dromes could be reloaded with light and bring it near the crowds or athletes from well outside of any reasonable security perimeter.
To be fair, "close to zero" isn't zero.
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Look at that story. It's obviously not the product of an open-minded person. It's just that in today's media-saturated society, in some circles, the word "drone" doesn't mean "aircraft that flies without a pilot". It has a political meaning, and these people just can't see past that. They see the word drone and immediately they think military, because their minds are small. "Wow, look, one that carries a camera, instead! Remarkable! And it's a quadrotor and not a fixed-wing aircraft! I've got to write an article about this right away!"
It would be humiliating if they weren't so unaware of any existence outside themselves and their little cliques. What's the word for that...oh right, solipsist.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
A full size helicopter with that many independent engines would be consigned to the 'heroic freaks of history' category, and probably never actually see use.
It's possible because they're relatively cheap modular electric motors. But 8 engined craft do exist(B-52), along with even crazier designs having existed in history.
But an 8 engined helicopter? You're right, that would be pretty crazy.
I don't read AC A human right
Wind was my first thought as well. For quad-copters the simple fact is the lack of collective pitch does massively affect the maneuverability in adverse conditions. You need a high volume of airflow over the blades to compensate and fixed pitch there is not much you can do to increase airflow without climbing rapidly. (although whether you could do it with an octocopter with four of the blades pulling down and four pushing up to counteract the climb?) There are plenty of model sized helicopters (even some microhelis with 8" blades can handle 15mph with a skilled pilot) that handle wind very well - they just need a high head speed.
Huge flying spider eh? That's me on the next train to Nope.
I'd hope that drone control systems are using encryption by now (though, given that military Predators and Reapers were, at least originally, being sent up with what was essentially a lightly modified satellite TV transmission system, easily attacked with the tools used for pirating satellite TV, I wouldn't bet too much money on it). As for malicious payloads... I'm glad that I'm not a VIP, and that the world is (all impressions to the contrary) apparently made largely of people who are either decent, painfully incompetent, or lazier than they are malicious.
If it were my job to guard somebody who occupies an office with, um, 'high medical turnover', I'd be shitting myself about the capabilities that drones bring to the table. Since I'm not, nor do I occupy such an office, I take comfort in the fact that bombings and similar incidents of all types are statistically well below my preference for video games and coding rather than exercise in terms of mortality risk, and that (to my knowledge) a drone has yet to be involved in such an attack, except as an agent of state force and under color of something vaguely resembling 'law'.
PITA has been known yo use octocopters to tresspass on private land durring hunting season to harrass game or hunters or record what they think is abhorent behavior. Slashdot even carried a story a while ago about a hunting club doing a pideon shoot being harrassed by them and shooting the copter.
If i wasn't on my phone i could post a link. I think you were joking but i wanted to reference that in case others didn't know about it.
When it comes to crazy, I'm not sure that even the Russians, back in their glory days of dubiously-wise white elephant weapons have anything on Project Pluto... I have to admire the sheer craziness with which they operated back in the day; but I can't say that I'm sorry to have missed the Cold War's greatest hits outside of playing Fallout.
As for 8-engined helicopters, my naive-because-it-isn't-his-problem! engineering assessment is that you could probably build one by bolting together enough lesser helicopters and borrowing the feedback/stability control systems from the little octocopters; but barring a contract to airlift an oil rig, assemble a prefab skyscraper like a layer cake, or some other slightly nutty project, I'm having a hard time thinking of what you would use such a monster for...
be vewy vewy qwiet. I'm hunting dwones.
You do run into the problem of beam weight - you need the blades for each helicoptor far enough apart to not interfere with each other, but they also need to be physically tied together. As size goes up, so doesn't the length of the beam required, and to retain enough strength the weight of the beam tends to go up by the cube as length increases linerally.
You should be able to save some weight by removing sophisticated pitch control systems from the individual blades, as well as the tail rotors, but it's still going to be less efficient than a single rotor craft.
I don't read AC A human right
Yes but it was an "Irish" pub.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
Happened seconds of flying time from where I work. Prompted some additional thought into disaster recovery and data protection. However a fire the year before had already done that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...
Pity you didn't care enough to even Google 'pub' 'helicopter' 'crash' before posting.
He didn't have any tea and biscuits ready for the police squad, and he didn't want to come off as a lousy host.
Ezekiel 23:20
> drone has yet to be involved in such an attack, except as an agent of state force and under color of something vaguely resembling 'law'.
I wasn't personally thinking of well focused assassination, but rather of attacks like the Boston Bombing. Even indiscriminate manslaughter among such large crowds has enormous political force, and the Olympics focus worldwide attention on a crowd aimed specially at international cooperation. I can vividly remember the Olympic hostage crisis in 1972: It focused worldwide attention on the politics of the terrorists who committed those murders.
A drone with mounted camera can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $37,000
This sounds like an article from 5 years ago. I just assembled a quadrocopter with HD video recording on a brushless DC gimbal + GPS + advanced flight controller for about $800. Entry level video ones start from around $350.
I was including those sorts of attacks. I'm, obviously, not in favor of explosives going off in crowds of civilians; but at a population level the risk of such is hanging out so far below various far more banal causes of morbidity and mortality that it just seems illogical to concern myself overmuch. It's tragic for the people who end up holding the short straw; but I'm incrementally more concerned that I might become one of the ~35,000 deaths/year caused by traffic accidents, among assorted other more-dangerous-things.
Sounds like a problem that can be solved by invoking carbon nanotubes and abusing the engineers!
I don't know if they actually every did it or not; but they managed to make enough noise that illinois introduced and passed legislation intended to stop them.
Based on the absence of either drone's-eye-view PETA releases or ground-level shots of triumphant hunters holding up birdshot-riddled drones, I'm inclined to think that it was two publicity seekers engaging in a codependent relationship, rather than anything actually hitting the air; but I wasn't able to authoritatively confirm or deny.
I beleive you mean PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, but I'm pretty sure loads of people think of them as Pains In The Aft region too....
Free Pie! The Pie is Also Evil!
RC Helicopter or Multicopter but not Drone! If you talk to just about anyone that builds flys or develops small flying RC aircraft we don't use the word 'drone'.
They do resemble drones to the general public but they are not militarized hardware and that is were the term drone came from. We have never used the term drone on our normal biplanes, piper cubs or swizzle sticks, helicopters, etc in the RC clubs. The only time the word drone come up is when someone was someone had a model military plane that some one would fly a drone RC plane for it to chase/ mock-shoot down. The English language gets muddier everyday and people are getting all hyped up by journalist that are stirring the pot of words. If people want to rag on the police use of surveillance copters then they may at least be closer to a military than the 6 or 8 rotor "chopperazzi" flying over the Olympics.
A.C. 2014
In Soviet Russia Drone Shoots You!
I think the biggest helicopter ever built had 4 engines.
The Mi 12 Homer was a cargo carrying craaft built over 40 years ago. I don't think any still exist today
"Irish" in what way ?
"That compares with the cost of a few thousand dollars an hour to rent a helicopter with pilot"
Bell LongRanger with pilot $1300/hr
Bell JetRanger with pilot $980/hr
Robinson R44 with pilot $650/hr
Robinson R22 with pilot $300/hr
A few thousand an hour? PUHLEAZE.
E (a real live helicopter pilot)
Not really. The DJI Phantom-2 is famous for thinking the battery is dead and splashing straight down.
Waypoints make these things pretty cool, but you really need to keep the size down before they get "too big", and that is hard when you need better dampening on the gimbal, better low light performance, better endurance, and wider control radius.
I hope they don't build one called "Challenger."
you could probably build one by bolting together enough lesser helicopters and borrowing the feedback/stability control systems from the little octocopters; but barring a contract to airlift an oil rig, assemble a prefab skyscraper like a layer cake, or some other slightly nutty project, I'm having a hard time thinking of what you would use such a monster for...
Speaking of slightly nutty projects, bolting several helicopters together has actually been tried, with rather spectacular results. Witness the Piasecki PA97 Helistat, where the blimp just adds more fun to the mix. The fun starts about 50 seconds in.
An Irish theme pub, in the same way you might go to a pub themed after a German Brauhaus. They're surprisingly common in the UK, and the places in Europe Britons go on holiday.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
It makes me feel better knowing it's not terrorists who are shooting the Olympics.
North America? so like Maine?
That headline confused the fuck out of me for a while. A pun on the word shooting? Cameras shoot film. Terrorists shoot people. Or drones are shooting people instead of terrorists. Or the drones are the ones responsible for shooting people, and the terrorists did nothing of the sort. Finally I realized that it's saying "Drones are not terrorists. They're filming the olympics."
The person flying the helicopter has a much better incentive not to crash. They've also been required to learn how to fly it correctly.
Similar, unauthorized dromes could be reloaded with light and bring it near the crowds or athletes from well outside of any reasonable security perimeter.
That's how competitive it is at the top. Winning is about using any advantage you can get away with, whether it's doping, corrupt judges, or a load of light.
You know, there's a different angle to think of here. Drunken boxing would probably be a fun Olympic sport to watch.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Perhaps the biggest reasons quadcopters will not be used by terrorists relates to the fact they are TERRIBLE weapon delivery systems. They have virtually no payload capability, meaning you would be lucky to get a hand grenade on them. A person with a backpack can carry far more and gain entry to places where attacks could occur. A mid range car could carry a far larger device, and is faster,
No doubt Quadcopters will be employed for evil at some point, just like cars are, but we should not allow irrational fear to override the larger good they could do. What we do need is sensible regulation and new technology to ensure separation between air traffic.
And for added security you could have a rescue parachute which you can deploy and the drone will not crash with all the elegance of a falling helicopter.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
Thank you for the corruption: my eyes are apparently still bleeding from having seen the beta!
I meant to write "light weaponry".
ut an 8 engined helicopter? You're right, that would be pretty crazy.
You're right - eight is hardly enough. Try eighteen, instead: http://www.e-volo.com/