Slashdot Mirror
Drone Crashes, Missing Champion Skier By Inches (cnn.com)
HughPickens.com writes: NBC reports that defending World Cup champion Marcel Hirscher, who won silver in the slalom at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, had a lucky escape after he narrowly avoided being hit by a falling drone. Hirscher was on his second run in a World Cup slalom race at Madonna di Campiglio in Italy when a remote-controlled drone with a mounted camera slammed down on the piste inches behind him. "This is horrible," Hirscher said after the event. "This can never happen again. This can be a serious injury." The International Ski Federation (FIS) released a statement on its website apologizing for the "unfortunate accident." But some saw the lighter side announcing that the drone wars had shifted to the ski slopes. "Man, I'd watch a lot more winter sports if this was a standard part of the game," tweeted Marc Andreessen. The company responsible for the drone, sports marketing agency Infront, said its initial investigation "indicates a malfunction of the drone." "The most likely reason is a strong and unforeseen interference on the operating frequency, leading to limited operability," Infront said in a statement. "The pilot followed the official security procedure, purposely flying the drone as close as possible to the ground before releasing it. The aim was to destroy the drone, in order to prevent it from losing control."
I first read the headline like: Missing champion skier inches near crashed drone, as if it was a search and rescue drone that crashed while looking for him.
Jeff Bezos is not able to understand the obvious problems with drones. He thinks Amazon can make deliveries using drones. He didn't think of these problems:
1) Dog runs from bushes and attacks drone, does damage. Who pays?
2) Child runs to drone, is hurt. Whose fault?
3) Drone fails in flight, crashes, kills people, destroys property. Amazon pays more than all profits from drone delivery.
4) Teenager is in a field trying a BB gun, shoots at drone. Drone crashes. What then?
5) Someone is testing a Tesla coil in his garage. The huge sparks emit electromagnetic interference, making communication with the drone impossible. Drone cannot be controlled, destroys property. Who pays?
6) Drone noise and danger reduces the value of houses in a neighborhood. An adjoining county has restrictions against drones; the value of the property there goes up.
7) RFI, Radio Frequency Interference: Someone is outside on the street welding something using an electric welder. Electric welding generates interference on ALL frequencies. The drone might receive nothing except noise.
8) Drone is stolen.
Did you look at the picture? What crashed was nothing close to con/prosumer equipment. What crashed was significantly more expensive, had significantly more lift and better optics than the DJI Inspire. I'd have to call BS if there weren't as advanced flight control systems as well as GLONASS/GPS/IR guidance. In the event of no RF control, the copter usually toggles a return to home, dependent upon how it's programmed. It doesn't just stop flying!
That wasn't a controlled landing, my guess is a power failure or motor issue.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
http://www.dji.com/product/pha...
Look towards the bottom of the page
"If the Phantom 2 and its controller are disconnected during flight, the system’s failsafe protection will activate, automatically telling and if the signal is good enough, the Phantom 2 to return home and land automatically."
A "drone" by its very definition has the capability to fly itself, if this thing went out of control simply because it lost connection to the remote control it was not a drone.
I pilot multi-rotor and fixed-wing UAVs (RPAS) myself. The UAV, which has crashed, weighs at least 3 - 5 kg. In my opinion, to fly such a heavy aircraft above a gathering of people is reckless.
The problem is that UAV operators are to lift in the air the cameras which are not designed for a light aircraft. A camera on a drone in the air does not need a display, as there is nobody up there to look at it.
For example, the GoPro4Session camera weighs just 74 grams. It is better already. It could be lifted into the air by a drone which weighs just 500-600 grams. But still this camera is waterproof down to 10 meters water depth. No need for it in the air. So the camera could be still lighter. It has a WiFi. Again, it is not used in the air, as WiFi may jam control radio-signal. It has a built-in battery for filming for hours. But the flights last just 15 minutes. So light replaceable batteries of different capacity could be used. The mount is from a molded solid plastic, but could be much lighter from aluminum or a composite plastic.
If such camera producers as GoPro, Panasonic, Sony, etc. started to produce cameras designed specially for UAVs, it could make flying much safer. Each gram counts for a flight, and camera producers just do not think about it at all. It is so sad.
One more point, the camera should be frangible, if it comes to a collision with the speed more than 200 km/h (manned aircraft's speed or crash).
Instead of introducing buracratic obstacles and "windmills" databses, the agencies could concentrate of making flying safer. And a good starting point could be the design of airborn cameras.