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FAA Program Tests Drones Flying Beyond Pilot's Line-of-Sight
itwbennett writes: FAA administrator Michael P. Huerta announced Wednesday a new Pathfinder Program under which the agency has partnered with three U.S. companies to explore three key types of unmanned operations, possibly paving the way for operations such as the aerial delivery of packages as proposed by companies like Amazon.com. One of the companies the FAA has partnered with is drone manufacturer PrecisionHawk, which will be surveying crops in rural areas using unmanned aircraft flying outside of the pilot's direct vision.
Call me when the drones are 3d printed and one uses an Oculus rift VR headset to fly them.
I'd just like to know why when we were doing this stuff in 2010, the only people who cared were the local paper.
I am a UAV pilot, and routinely fly beyond line of sight. It works poorly, at best, and routinely has small issues that leave me convinced that it should not be allowed in civil airspace in the foreseeable future. People continue to think that these are harmless toys, but micro-UAVs are just as lethal as a fastball thrown by a professional. Think about 55 lbs, a large part battery, falling 500' on you. Not a pleasant thought. Not a toy.
If they were required to have an auto-deploy parachute that might reduce some categories of problems
Nowhere in the FAA release does it mention package delivery. It only covers the following;
CNN will be researching how visual line-of-sight operations might be used for newsgathering in urban areas.
PrecisionHawk, a manufacturer, will be surveying crops in rural areas using unmanned aircraft flying outside of the pilot’s direct vision.
BNSF Railroad will explore the challenges of using these vehicles to inspect their rail infrastructure beyond visual line-of-sight in isolated areas.
I don't think humans should be allowed to pilot any vehicles in our airspace. 1/2 of all airplane crashes are due to pilot error.
Whenever a Nerf dart landed in my coworker's cube, he would keep the dart and tell the person who lost the dart to go pound sound. I can see the same thing happening to drones that crash into his backyard. That's a nice drone you lost, too bad you're not getting it back.
I think the idea of not going beyond line of sight is that you'll still be able to recover from FPV equipment failure, and also so you can be more aware of what's around the craft in the area you're flying (e.g. visually inspect what it's flying above).
You can simply look up, or take off your goggles (if you're using them instead of an LCD). In addition, some countries require a second person as a "spotter" to keep an eye out, visually, for things the pilot can't see.
Go beyond line of sight and you don't know what's around the craft other than what you can see through the (usually low quality) camera. Also the majority of autopilot mechanisms available today have no object detection and avoidance, so they can fly into solid objects (including people).
The CQ10A weighs 1400 lbs wet, and uses a parafoil for lift, the parachute's baked into the design.
It's only those dumbass quadcopter designs that like burning battery fighting gravity. hint, you're never gonna win...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Predator drones fly beyond the line of sight of the pilot all the time
The thing that annoys me most about this issue is all the government regulators that jumped on them like they were anything new.
We've had remote controlled helicopters and airplanes for ages. Most drones are basically exactly that. There is a dude that stands there with a controller, and he moves it around and the "drone" which is just a remote controlled helicopter moves around in response.
Fucking shocking.
But so many fuckwits have these notions of defense industry military assault drones in their tiny little heads that they think some 500 dollar toy some dude assembled in his backyard is somehow in anyway analogous.
Here is the first thing you need for a real drone - Autonomous flight. Practically none of the things we call "drones" can do that.
Even in this case they laughably are trialing a "drone" that leaves the line of sight of the operator as if that would somehow be an innovation for a fucking drone.
Not only should a REAL drone be able to do that but I should be able to OD on cocaine and die and the drone should still follow its programmed flight plan largely unaffected by my twitching corpse with blood foaming out of my nostrils.
Look, I'm cool with the government regulating stuff because they're after all the warlords that have claimed our asses. But can they at least be competent warlords?
I have this feeling when I read government actions... It sounds like some old lady that just misheard something her grandson told her and is massively overreacting and misunderstanding everything in the most disastrous way possible. That is the government is sounding batty, senile, reactionary, and generally out of touch with things not Matlock related.
Here is what I want with drones:
1. If the drone is operating over private property, is not rising more than 500 feet above the ground, and the relevant airspace is not being used by commercial or military aircraft then let me do whatever the fuck I want. Obviously I shouldn't fly a giant glowing blow up doll airship over my property to annoy my neighbor, Ned Flanders... But if I'm being reasonable then leave me alone. I don't even want to fill out a form. Leave me alone.
2. If the drone is relatively light then I don't want to hear a lot of bitching about health and safety. Fucking birds crash into stuff all the time and children throw balls over fences... in either case you could be hit my a confused sparrow or some out of no where ball... and we don't expect health and safety to get involved with any of that. Little remote controlled or even autonomous flying craft aren't going to hurt anyone. Most of them could drop right out of the sky right onto your head and they wouldn't do anything. They're as light as possible by design because the little shitty motors and the little crappy batteries can't handle anything heavier. Now, for bigger craft... fine. But for the little stuff, give me a break.
3. If forms are to be filled out, then they need to work something like a pilot's license or a driver's license. That is... you fill out some forms, maybe take a test, pay some fee to the relevant warlord, and then you're good to go. This means amongst other things that Amazon etc get to fly their fuck planes if they can fill out a form and pay a fee. To those that say "what happens if their drone falls out of the sky and damages my rose bushes!'... same thing that would happen if UPS hit your rose bushes with their truck. Why is complicated all of a sudden?
4. Assuming we can master steps 1-3, I'd like to see drones used throughout our society. For delivery, for surveillance, for crop dusting, for real estate photography, for police chases, for forest fire surveillance AND actually going to the relevant lake/water source, grabbing X hundred gallons, and dumping all that on the forest fire... and really an endless number of cool shit.
Now someone is going to say "but the warlords scare me and I don't really like the idea of the warlords having stuff that makes them scarier"... well my overripe
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
... this use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Havent military been doing this sort of thing for ages now? Pilots sits in nice comfty cubicle in US and drones other side of world killing inocents...