Tag Archives: sUAS

“I’m an idiot, someone stop me!”

Posted on by

An amateur Phantom II operator (or, perhaps we should say, former operator) did something stupid that could have hurt someone, and now laments the fact that what he was doing isn’t illegal:

The thing is, there are basically zero regulations in the U.S. preventing what I did from happening again. There is no age requirement or learner’s permit necessary to purchase a drone. There are some basic rules in place from the FAA that ban hobbyists from flying over densely populated areas or close to airports, but aside from that, if you stay under 400 feet, you’re good to go.

When it comes to commercial drone flights, on the other hand, the FAA has made them completely illegal in the US. It’s taken years to develop new rules for companies, during which time other countries have forged ahead. And now it’s saying it will miss the deadline set by Congress to get commercial drones flying over American skies in 2015.

This is completely backward. It didn’t really hit me until my own crash, but the FAA is actually focusing its regulation on the wrong group. Companies typically need to carry liability insurance on the machinery they operate. A bad crash would be terrible for a brand, something that will make them more conservative about flights. The people with the least to lose are the casual hobbyist like me.

We think that the writer has a valid point about insurance concerns driving the commercial drone sector. But his call for the nanny state to stop him from acting foolishly is, well, silly. First, his argument assumes that the woman on the bicycle would have been left without a remedy had his careless behavior injured her or her child.

His in-laws probably have homeowner’s insurance. It might have adversely impacted his marriage, but any decent plaintiffs’ lawyer would have immediately looked into that.

And perhaps the writer has his own umbrella policy. He doesn’t say.

But the larger question is, at what point do we call on government to restrict the liberty of others, simply because some people act irresponsibly? We license car drivers, and have laws against reckless driving and drunk driving, but that doesn’t stop cars from being deadly missiles (much more dangerous than a 5-pound drone) in the hands of the wrong person. Requiring licenses for model aircraft operators seems grossly disproportionate to the risk involved.

If we are to remain a free and open society, on some level we have to still count on the virtue of individual citizens as the primary keeper of civic peace. Translated into contemporary parlance:

Don’t be an idiot, and we’ll all get along, just fine.

Drone Tech News of the Day

Posted on by

Every day, we see more and more stories on developments in drone tech. Here are some stories that have been making the rounds, today.

Somebody went out and created a biodegradable drone:

The bulk of the prototype is made of a root-like fungal material called mycelium. It was cultivated in a custom drone shape by Ecovative Design, a company in Green Island, New York, that grows the stuff as a lightweight sustainable alternative for applications like wine packaging and surfboard cores.

The fungal body has a protective covering of sticky cellulose “leather” sheets grown by bacteria in the lab. Coating the sheets are proteins cloned from the saliva of paper wasps – usually used to waterproof their nests. Circuits were printed in silver nanoparticle ink, in an effort to make the device as biodegradable as possible.

So far, so good. But then there’s this:

The next part the team hope to make safe to degrade are the drone’s sensors, and they have already started studying how to build them using E. coli bacteria.

Gross.

DJI has launched a kick-ass new drone that includes a 4k camera. We just like the way this looks.

Back in Hollywood, people are starting to understand the potential benefits from the FAA’s approval of seven 333 exemption applications:

The day rate for a helicopter can range from $20,000 to $40,000 with crew. Operating a drone with crew can cut costs down to a rate that ranges between $9,000 to $15,000, according to Carmean. Elements that affect drone day rates pends the camera, aircraft, crew and location.

“The possibility of making shots that you couldn’t do before is extremely exciting. A director and a director of photography can say I want this shot in a movie and we can get it without a helicopter,” said Poster.

“The insurance; it’s a lot cheaper to insure a 25-pound drone than it is to insure a three-ton helicopter,” Chris Schuster, CEO and lead drone pilot at Vortex Aerial told TheWrap.

The demo video at the link is pretty cool.

Amazon Prime Air to Begin Testing in UK

Posted on by

Prime in the air

That “whoosh” sound you hear might be the sound of jobs and investment going overseas:

Amazon is now expanding its R&D operations in Cambridge – two years after buying Cambridge-based startup Evi Technologies – to take advantage of the talent pool of academics and researchers in the area. The lab will focus on Prime Air, Amazon’s name for its drones project, the blog TechCrunch reported.

Amazon has advertised a number of aviation-related UK jobs in recent weeks, such as a flight operations engineer for Amazon Prime Air: “Flight test experience, manned or unmanned, is preferred,” the advertisement stated. Other roles include a senior research scientist position and a site leader job.

It’s probably correct that Amazon Prime Air has been preparing to conduct testing in the UK for some time, and perhaps this project would have commenced regardless of regulatory progress, or the lack thereof, in the U.S. But one can’t help thinking that FAA foot-dragging is already costing us, dearly.

Litigation Pushback Against the FAA: A Brief History

Posted on by

The Volokh Conspiracy guest-bloggers Michael Berry and Nabiha Syed have written a lengthy post about the recent history of litigation between the FAA and small drone operators. It’s an excellent and detailed review of everything from the Pirker case, to Texas Equusearch, to the FAA’s Notice of Interpretation of the special provision governing model aircraft, which led to the recent Petitions for Review filed by Brendan Schulman on behalf of persons such as our friend Peter Sachs.

Indeed, for those who would like to quickly educate themselves on the current state of play vis a vis small drones, or sUAS (also called microdrones), this would be a good place to start.