For about US$2,000, you can get a pretty ridiculous camera-equipped UAV, which can be controlled by radio at a range of up to 15km. People fly them using live video streaming to goggles.
One group of people using these drones has made some impressive videos of places like New York City and the Matterhorn. Their work is pretty audacious, both in terms of how they flirt with the destruction of their drones by flying close to obstacles and because of how they flirt with trouble with the authorities by flying low in major urban centres.
These drones may have been part of the inspiration for the drone-related plot points in William Gibson’s latest novel, Zero History.
Related:
Contrast the above with the expense of military drones:
I wonder how much more capable the Ravens are than these civilian drones, and how much of the cost of the military drones is just profit for arms companies.
I think the Ravens may bring big-artillery back into theatres of war. I believe that after WW2 cruise missiles replaced the desire to build bigger and bigger artillery, largely because targeting long range shelling requires very difficult recon, and cruise missiles can use the targetting systems of air to ground missiles. But, if they can just fly one of these into the field to track the target coordinates, the fact that a big-bertha shell is so much cheaper than a cruise missile could become very tempting. Especially if America realizes it has to begin practicing its imperialism is a more cost-effective way.
It’s very hard to predict what the impact of drones on war will be, when all is said and done. Broad area marine surveillance is one area in which they could have an important transformative effect.
Low-cost unmanned aircraft are an interest of mine, so much so that I sometimes wonder if I could make a business of it. I think an potential niche to fill would be one in the $2000 – $5000 range.
Digital cameras of good quality are fairly cheap and GPS is extremely cost effective for navigation.
Of course, laws are the tricky part as you mention. But wouldn’t it be amazing to program a little airplane perhaps slightly larger the size of a typical radio controlled unit to go to a coordinate, photograph and return?
Sea Shepherd uses drone to hunt whalers
Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd has used a drone to find the Japanese whaling fleet 1,000 miles north of the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary.
The crew onboard the Steve Irwin deployed the drone to successfully locate and photograph the whaling factory boat.
Jeff Hansen from Sea Shepherd says now that the ship’s position is known, the next step is to move in.
“Right now we’ve deployed a drone which has gone up and taken aerial surveillance which has located the factory vessel, but we’ve also picked up three harpoon ships on our tail and security vessels but that’s not going to deter us in our mission,” he said.
Difference engine
Unblinking eyes in the sky
Technology and society: Drone aircraft are no longer restricted to military use. They are being built and used by hobbyists, activists and estate agents, among others. What are the implications for safety and privacy?
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Safety is not the only concern associated with the greater use of civilian drones, however. There is also the question of privacy. In America, at least, neither the constitution nor common law prohibits the police, the media or anyone else from operating surveillance drones. As the law stands, citizens do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place. That includes parts of their own backyards that are visible from a public vantage point, including the sky. The Supreme Court has been very clear on the matter. The American Civil Liberties Union, a campaign group, says drones raise “very serious privacy issues” and are pushing America “willy-nilly toward an era of aerial surveillance without any steps to protect the traditional privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and expected.”
Drone Photos Lead to Indictment For Texas Polluters
In January of this year, we posted news of a major pollution site in Texas that was the subject of some anonymous amateur sleuths with drones, who used their UAVs to document the release of a “river of blood” (pig blood, that is) into the Trinity River as it flows through Dallas. Now, garymortimer writes, that documentation has resulted in legal action in the form of an indictment from a Dallas grand jury.
Technology Quarterly: Q1 2013
Monitor
Flights of fancy
Unmanned gliders: Powered drones are old hat. The latest robot aircraft are wafted around by the air itself, allowing them to stay aloft far longer
The tools are improving and getting cheaper. Serge Wich, professor of primate biology at Liverpool’s John Moores University, has been using drones to calculate orang-utan densities in the Indonesian rainforest. Orang-utans make a nest every day—“quite comfortable ones, with a blanket woven from branches”, explains Mr Wich—so orang-utan populations can be guessed from nest numbers. “We were slogging through the rainforest thinking how nice it would be to have a camera fly over it to monitor nest frequency,” he says. But he assumed it would be too expensive—until he found an American website, diydrones, which enabled him to make one for $700. A bunch of conservation organisations has set up ConservationDrones.org to share information about this handy tool; Research Drones, a Swiss company, makes drones specifically for environmental and research purposes. “It’s our hope that an unmanned aerial vehicle will become like a pair of binoculars,” says Mr Wich.
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21585100-contrary-popular-belief-economic-growth-may-be-good-biodiversity-long-view
Amazon Prime Air: drone-based 30 minute delivery
Jeff Bezos took to 60 Minutes to announce Prime Air, a drone-based 30-minute delivery system for densely populated areas that comes with its own video design-fiction illustrating how it might work. The vision is an exciting one, but the designfic elides some important questions like the regulatory framework under which thousands (millions?) of drones might share the sky as businesses compete to do airborne delivery; whether that framework would be sufficient to actually maintain public safety (hello midair drone collision over a busy highway with attendant plummeting shrapnel into the path of speeding cars!); and what the energy and carbon footprint of drones would be, especially with comparison to conventional delivery logistics.
ONCE, and not so long ago, the armed forces had all the best toys. America’s information-technology industry was powered by military budgets, and consumer electronics fed on the scraps. Now, the roles are being reversed. And there are few better illustrations of that reversal than an unmanned aircraft called Razor. Raven, the American armed forces’ workhorse small drone (it has a wingspan of 1.3 metres and is used for reconnaissance) is built using conventional techniques by AeroVironment, a Californian firm, and is controlled by bespoke software. It costs $76,000 a pop. Razor, an experimental vehicle designed by the MITRE Corporation (a not-for-profit organisation that manages government research programmes) and the University of Virginia, is turned out to order by 3D printers and is controlled by an Android smart phone loaded with freely available apps. It costs $2,000.
Drone video of downtown Los Angeles
Zephyr (named after the Greek god of the west wind) is actually an unmanned, ultralight, solar-powered, propeller-driven aircraft. But it is designed, just as some satellites are, to hover indefinitely over the same part of the world. With a 23-metre wingspan and a weight of only 50kg, it is fragile and must remain above the ravages of the weather and the jet stream both by day and by night. It therefore flies at an altitude of around 21km (70,000 feet) during daylight hours, and then glides slowly down to around 15km when the sun is unavailable to keep it aloft.
Its solar cells, which are mounted on its wings, produce 1kW for every 1kg of panel. That power is fed into lithium-sulphur rechargeable batteries which can store 350 watt-hours per kilogram. (For comparison, the lithium-polymer batteries in iPhones store around 200 watt-hours per kilogram.) The result is a plane that can, potentially, stay aloft for months—though its longest test-run so far is a fortnight.
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21614095-cheap-alternative-satellites-starting-take-west-wind-blows
Drone countermeasures
Hacked off
Guarding against rogue drones could be a legal nightmare
Sweden bans cameras on drones
The use of camera drones has been made illegal in Sweden unless they are granted a special surveillance permit.
The FAA has granted CNN a waiver that allows it to fly its Vantage Robotics Snap drone over open-air crowds of people at altitudes of up to 150 feet. “This is a new precedent in this kind of waiver: Previous exemptions allowed flight of drones over people in closed set operations (like for filmmaking purposes) and only when tethered, with a max height of 21 feet,” reports TechCrunch. From the report:
“The new waiver granted to CNN, as secured through its legal counsel Hogan Lovells, allows for flight of the Vantage UAV (which is quite small and light) above crowds regardless of population density. It was a big win for the firm and the company because it represents a change in perspective on the issue for the FAA, which previously viewed all requests for exceptions from a “worst-case scenario” point of view. Now, however, the FAA has accepted CNN’s “reasonableness Approach,” which takes into account not just the potential results of a crashed drone, but also the safe operating history of the company doing the flying, their built-in safety procedures, and the features included on the drone model itself that are designed to mitigate the results of any negative issues.”
People flying drones for fun in America will have to register their toys with the Federal Aviation Administration after all. A judge had thrown out the requirement, finding that the FAA didn’t have the authority to implement it. But the rule was inserted into a defence bill that was signed into law this week. Drones weighing as little as 250 grammes will have to be registered and display an ID.
Researchers at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel have built a proof-of-concept system for counter-surveillance against spy drones that demonstrates a clever, if not exactly simple, way to determine whether a certain person or object is under aerial surveillance. They first generate a recognizable pattern on whatever subject — a window, say — someone might want to guard from potential surveillance. Then they remotely intercept a drone’s radio signals to look for that pattern in the streaming video the drone sends back to its operator. If they spot it, they can determine that the drone is looking at their subject.
Most existing drones do, however, need to be flown by an experienced operator. Indeed, the law often requires this. Drones also need technical support and maintenance. And the people operating them would be well advised to have an understanding of the legal and safety implications of what they are up to. Hence the appeal of the “drone-in-a-box”. This is a term being applied to the offerings of several firms that aspire to sell the advantages of drones without the associated worries.
The box in question is a base station that houses the drone, recharges it and transfers the data it has collected to the customer. The drone may fly autonomously, according to a preprogrammed schedule, find its way automatically to a point it is ordered to visit, or be piloted remotely by an operative of the company that supplies the system, from a control centre anywhere on the planet.
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In Israel, Airobotics has already gone through a similar process: Optimus drones are now able to fly unsupervised. In both countries the authorities are being sensibly cautious, but the data suggest that automatic flights of the Optimus variety are safer than piloted ones, particularly during take-off and landing, when most accidents happen. Whether this also applies to remote piloting remains to be seen. But GreenSight seems confident it will. Justin McClellan, the firm’s chief marketing officer, hopes the strictures on observers will change next year—indeed, he expects a general relaxation of the rules, not just for GreenSight, but also for its competitors.
The experience they gained in running the trans-Elliðárvogur service allowed aha and Flytrex to obtain permission to run 12 other routes across Reykjavik, including journeys over land. And operations have just been extended again, permitting drones to deviate by up to 700 metres either side of those fixed routes. This means deliveries can now be made to the backyards of registered customers who have also obtained their neighbours’ permission for flights to pass overhead.
Those customers can order goods using online apps and, weather permitting, select a drone delivery. Most of the shops and restaurants taking part are close to aha’s office, where they drop off goods to be delivered. These are then loaded into a drone by a company employee, who dispatches the craft after entering the destination using a hand-held device. The customer gets a message to say the drone is on its way, and can use the app to follow its progress on a map. When it arrives, the customer enters a pin into the app to accept delivery and the drone lowers its package on a line. Should someone try to pull the line, it detaches in order to avoid crashing the drone.
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Next month, in Singapore, a drone made by Airbus, a European aerospace group, will begin ferrying supplies and spare parts to ships moored offshore. Airbus is working on the project with Wilhelmsen, a marine-services company. Wilhelmsen reckons that using drones will reduce delivery costs to vessels by up to 90%, and will be safer than employing launches to carry those deliveries by sea. Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce firm, is making drone deliveries on a number of fixed routes across the vast Shanghai Jinshan Industrial Park and has plans to launch similar operations in other areas.
Garmin launches emergency Autoland – FLYER
https://www.flyer.co.uk/garmin-launches-autoland-emergency-system/
Garmin, a Swiss-registered, American-operated technology company, is best know for its gps satellite-based navigation systems. But the firm also makes electronic control systems for aircraft. Autoland, as they dub the kit attached to their panic button, is a result of putting the two together.
Pressing the button switches control of the plane to its flight computers, in a manner similar to engaging an autopilot. Garmin’s system, however, goes far beyond being a standard autopilot. It transmits an emergency radio code to alert air-traffic control and other planes in the area. It analyses weather conditions, winds and the amount of fuel available before selecting a suitable airfield to divert to. It then flies to that airport, descends, lines up on the runway, sets the flaps and lowers the landing gear. As it approaches touchdown, it crabs the plane slightly sideways to cope with any crosswinds and aligns the nose with the centre of the runway, just as a human pilot would. Once landed, it applies the brakes to bring the plane to a halt. It then turns the engine off.
The coronavirus pandemic has crippled the world, and drone users have spent the past two months trying to figure out their technology can help battle the virus. There’s lots of talk of using drones to deliver medical supplies and to sanitize streets, but not much of this is happening in the wild. Mostly, we’re using speaker-carrying drones to yell at people. The pandemic shout drone first hit the internet in early February, when Chinese authorities used some to startle grandmothers. Police would speak through the drone and tell people to wear masks or to go home. Soon after, Italian, Spanish, and French authorities all fielded their own shout drones for quarantine enforcement, and the rest of the world followed suit. In the United States, authorities have used them in Daytona Beach, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; and Honolulu. In Wyckoff, New Jersey, police used one to sing “Happy Birthday” to socially distanced children.
Royal Mail testing drone delivery to Britain’s outlying islands
https://boingboing.net/2021/05/12/royal-mail-testing-drone-delivery-to-britains-outlying-islands.html