That Toy Is Now a Drone

fluxgate (2851685) writes "A notice from the FAA announced earlier this week just turned a bunch of kids' toys into drones. In the past, the FAA had made the distinction between model aircraft (allowed) and drones (prohibited without special permission) according to whether they were used for recreation (okay) or commercial purposes (verboten). Now they have further narrowed the definition of model aircraft: If you fly it through video goggles, it no longer qualifies. This move eliminates First Person View (FPV) radio control flying. I'm an editor at IEEE Spectrum with a special interest and blogged about this disturbing development as soon as I heard the news."

Comments

Not surprised, mixed feelings

[caseih]

As an RC airplane enthusiast, who likes to dabble in FPV and UAVs, I must say that I'm not surprised. However my feelings are a mix of outrage at the FAA as well as understanding. When a few irresponsible people use their toys in ways that are, well irresponsible, I'm not at all surprised to see the FAA come down hard on everyone. I think in many ways this is a tragedy of the commons. A few idiots have actually ruined it for everyone. When a toy has the power to kill people, or to hurt them, and people do stupid things with them, then it ceases to be a toy. We are now seeing stories in the news almost weekly of stupid people flying their toys in reckless and dangerous ways.

That said, I don't see how the FAA's rules are enforceable, nor do I see how the FAA can actually claim to have the authority to make rules in an an area that, as far as I can tell, congress has never granted them the power to do.

If FAA truly has the power to regulate a hobby, then they need to have a framework in place to allow this activity to continue safely. It's happening everywhere in the world. Banning it in the US will only put companies behind the curve who want to develop and use the technology.

Re:Not surprised, mixed feelings

[russotto]

The difference is that few would argue that going hunting by connecting your gun to a couple of $9 servos, and operating it over a glitchy radio link where you have a tiny field of view through a bad camera, and it may randomly go off if you lose radio is a sane thing to do.

The FAA opposes that, but they're perfectly fine with operating it over a glitchy radio link where all you have is a Mk I eyeball located a thousand feet away.

Re:Not surprised, mixed feelings

[Jane Q. Public]

I seem to have had to keep repeating this endlessly on Slashdot, but a Federal NTSB judge has already ruled that the FAA does not have lawful authority to regulate low-altitude models or drones, regardless of whether they are being used commercially.

The FAA has appealed the decision, and so far seems hell-bent on regulating as much as it can before it gets slapped down in higher court. Which it surely will... Congress simply hasn't given them legal authority to regulate such things. They're acting like the EPA has been recently, seemingly trying to greedily grab up all the usurped authority they can before the November elections.

Peeping Toms in the Neighborhood

[retroworks]

The article and comments miss the point. http://washington.cbslocal.com... They are trying to regulate the use of the drones for peeping in neighbors yards and windows. They are trying to regulate it in a way without banning them, the over-reaction which will probably occur the first time a nude child shows up on youtube from an evil neighbor's google glasses. The CBS article - and most articles via news.google.com - point out that you can buy these pocket yard drones on amazon and are more nuanced about the policy debate than the /. "government is gonna take your toys away" article.

Re:It flies like a drone, it watches like a drone.

[phantomfive]

I also don't see why they should be allowed to operate unmanned aerial vehicles with surveillance capabilities any more than anyone else.

The default should be yes, you're allowed to do it as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. Going to a park or a field and flying a model airplane (or drone, however you want to call it) doesn't hurt anyone, so it should be allowed.

One of the main arguments against centralized government authority is that it's too big to take into account the concerns of everyone, so small constituencies get trampled. That is the case here, people who were not hurting anyone are now prevented from a healthy hobby, and have very little recourse.

Re:They're infringing my Second-Amendment drone ri

[zippthorne]

I'm not sure that the FAA has the authority to regulate the quadcopter in the first place, but the quadcopter-with-a-gun is certainly a weapon, so why wouldn't it be protected by the second amendment?

side note: To all those who say, "because that sounds super dangerous" the response is to draft a constitutional amendment to allow the government to regulate more things. Simply "interpreting" away the teeth of the second amendment merely encourages contempt of the constitution and all the other things protected by other clauses and amendments are sure to be abridged in the same manner.

Further side note: Perhaps it's me, but I've noticed over the past few years that while both congress and the people are interested in "regulating drones," both parties seem to have very different ideas about what will be regulated. Congress seems to want to regulate the use of drones by private individuals, but the clamor from the public seems to be about the use of drones by the state for surveillance or armed action. The whole thing is shaping up not unlike the calls for "immigration reform" where each party's ideas about what the reform should be are other parties' ideas about what needs to be fixed.

Not anything new

[BitZtream]

The FAA has always had this rule.

To be a flying a 'model' you have to fly by line of sight, i.e. with your eyes on the model, not via electronics. Its been this way for years.

Re:The Goggles!

[ShanghaiBill]

They do something! They make my hipster hobby illegal!

In principle, this is a good change. The regulations should be not be based on "hobby" vs "commercial". They should instead be based on size, weight, speed, altitude, method of control (line of sight, or not, etc.), capabilities (camera, machine gun, etc.), and where it is flown (public vs private land). If you are flying a drone less than 5kg, on your own property, and keeping it below 100 meters, it should be anything goes, with no permit required. After that, there should be reasonable restrictions.

Re: They're infringing my Second-Amendment drone r

[lgw]

In coding terms, the militia part is a comment, the right part is code. The militia part isn't part of the operative law of the constitution; never was. It clarifies intent, however.

But viewed in the context of the time, with a bunch of ordinary people with weaponry in their private possession (including military-grade stuff) just having used that to overthrow an oppressive government, it's quite clear the intent there was "a check on government overreach". Even through the 19th century, it was common for 1%ers to buy cannon, Gatling guns and other clearly military hardware, and bring it along to war, or donate it to the town for local defense. Due to some remarkably stupid procurement decisions by the US military, we would likely have been soundly defeated in the Spanish-American War had it not been for rich guys bringing along artillery they bought themselves (and Roosevelt basically inventing the modern "base of fire" infantry tactic with those Gatling guns.)

It's only been in the past century that we've had this notion that the right to keep and bear arms had secret limitations written in invisible ink.

Re:They're infringing my Second-Amendment drone ri

[Crosshair84]

Exactly. Imagine what they could do with everyday objects if they decided to do more than go for a body count and actually had the inclination to come over here. *cough* southern border *cough* Let me just throw out a few possibilities to make the point.

Caltrops. This several thousand year old weapon, first used against humans and horses, remains effective today against vehicles with pneumatic tires. You can make them out of darn near any piece of thin metal. Just have every member go around town once a month to every hardware/big-box store in town and buy a box of nails or screws for cash. Pickup a gallon of milk or something else and you'll blend right in with the millions of other people picking up odds and ends for home.

With a few basic tools and a welder a few guys can build caltrops assembly line style. Then just go out on the road just before rush hour when its dark or during ran so it's harder for the car behind to notice the bouncing spike thing coming from under your car and drop them one at a time through a hole in the floor. (Make sure you make sure they don't bounce into your own tires.) Home-rigged caltrops like these usually don't cause blowouts, but will case a slow leak that will deflate a tire. How many car and truck tires do you need to take out before you case a cluster of a traffic jam? Sure sounds lame, but what happens when your group does this once every month and there are 4 other cells in the area doing the same? In certain areas of the country this could bring commerce to a standstill.

High tension wooden power pole in middle of nowhere + Chainsaw. Don't really need to explain this one further except that power pole wood is hard on chainsaw chains. Sure just one cell doing this would just be a nuisance, a couple dozen driving around the country doing this will quickly overwhelm the repair crews. Just cutting one will usually result in the neighboring poles holding the wires up for the time being, allowing an escape and not letting people know exactly when you did the deed.

Supposedly Iran has sleeper cells in the US tasked with doing exactly this should the US attack Iran. No idea if it's true or not, but attacking infrastructure wouldn't exactly be a hard thing to do.

Re:The Goggles!

[thegarbz]

You've just dangerously oversimplified a complicated problem.

100m? What happens if you live on a property right in the flight path next to the airport?

Weight? Weight means nothing. I accidentally ran into myself with my 6kg hexacopter doing a stupid stunt. I ended up with bruises and a few broken cheap plastic props. On the flip side one of my friends flies this tiny little ~2kg quadrocopter which he also flew into himself. He ended up in hospital thanks to very high speed carbon fibre blades slicing him up his arms and his face. He ended up with quite a few stitches as a result.

So what's a reasonable restriction? Any quad could potentially kill someone. If you're interested in safety you'd need to take into account weight class, propeller speed, propeller type. Now you're talking private property, so if I fly my quad some 100m above my house on my private land and I have an incident, where will the quad end up? Prop failure, RF failure, actually every failure I've seen has resulted in a little multirotor craft not falling straight down. Maybe you should only be able to fly on private property if you live in an acreage?

This is much more complicated than you think.