According to this report from seacostonline.com, on your next Phantom fly away you could have a full police department to the rescue. Just ask.
A Greenland resident alerted police that he suddenly lost control of his DJI Phantom quadcopter. The personal drone flew away carrying, you had guesses it, a GoPro camera attached. Should the quadcopter be recovered it would be nice to see the full flyaway video recorded by the Phantom, finally free from the chains of the owner’s radio commands.
The DJI Phantom quadcopter. This great model have reports of an occasional “fly away” behavior that can lead to crashes, and possibly loosing the aircraft.
The police asked residents to be on the lookout of the flown away quad. Flying the quad was not done illegally, so possibly it could be returned to the owner after rescue. Indeed Police Chief Tara Laurent said Thursday that “He can’t locate it, so we’re trying to help him get it back”.
Local 6 found a drone that was hovering over central Florida and then crashed on the ground. It appears to be a DJI F330 quadcopter with a NAZA flight controller with GPS.
The quadcopter had a camera GoPro attached to it apparently with generous footage inside. This provided clues on the flight activities of the quadcopter and, as it happens, on the actual owner of the quad.
The video below reports this interesting story by Local 6 and some examples of the footage recorded from the quadcopter.
Self portrait of the pilot, from the footage in the GoPro from the DJI F330 quadcopter that crashed in florida
The video features an interview with the pilot, who comes out as a nice guy passionated with multirotors. In short, one of us. He explains that his only purpose was to take some nice footage to upload on youtube. Local 6 in my opinion is “pumping” an otherwise ordinary quadcopter crash to make a story out of it and point a big accusative finger on personal drones, as if they were mainly used for voyeuristic purposes, which indeed is not the case.
Using a quadcopter with such purposes, by the way, is not that easy. They are quite noisy by nature, not so discreet, and the carried cameras are in most cases wide angle cameras not really good for taking footage with voyeuristic interest. Not that this could not be done in principle, by selecting particular gear for the video footage, but it is technically far more complicated than it might seem to an inexperienced average person expressing his opinions on the matter. Hopefuly reports like the Local 6 above will not lead to issuing over-restrictive legislation on our nice hobby whose main purpose is to have fun and take some special video from an original perspective.
This is documented in the video below, by youtube user Buddhanz1, that indeed ends with the crash of the Phantom after a strong hit by a bird from above:
This video contributes to increase our knowledge about the possible animal species – quadcopter/multirotors interactions and relationships. These interactions should be probably taken into consideration on planning drone delivery services such as Amazon Prime Air or the recently announced DHL quadcopter delivery services for urgent goods and medicines. Should researchers who are developing these aerial delivery services consider adding some devices to deter various animal species, including at least dogs and birds, from attacking or approaching the flying machine, in order to provide a secure and undisturbed delivery of the ordered goods? This might well be an important evolutionary step that the present generation of multirotors will have to face in order to be safe from animal attacks.
As a very basic first step, what about some camouflage like the following (just a joke here)? Might make birds more friendly (hey, it’s one of us..) or more aggressive (hey, a big bird we are not familiar with..). Testing and research required 🙂
Here’s another interesting example of bird attack on a quadcopter. In this case it looks like the bird had excellent motivations, as the quad was really flying very close and over the bird’s nest. The attack of the bird in this case is just an example of excellent parental care and protection of the brood.
The pilot and maker of the video above recognizes that he was disturbing the birds and states he won’t do this again, which looks like a great idea. Still interesting to see how birds likely perceive multirotors as other, possibly dangerous, big birds, and feel in competition for the control of their aerial space.
In the following video a big swarm of bees repeatedly attacks a quadcopter during a flight. What triggered the reaction? Possibly the quadcopter casually encountered the swarm and the blades caused some casualties that were not appreciated by the bees. The bees attack the quad twice. After a moment in which they seem to be gone, back they are with full force.
As user MsMzphit commented on youtube, this is un-bee-lievable!
With the exponential diffusion of quadcopters and other personal drones, we’ll probably witness more quadcopter-animal interactions in the future. We’ll keep an eye on those as they are also part of the game.
DHL quadcopter for the new drone delivery service – source
For the test drive, or maiden flight, the selection of what to carry and deliver was highly significant and probably want to send a message: a packet with a medicine was delivered from a Bonn pharmacy to the DHL headquarters, a two minutes journey.
This screenshot from the DHL web site indeed is indicative of an attention of DHL to the logistics of deliveries for Life Sciences and Health Care:
DHL dedication to Life Sciences and Healthcare
The quadcopter weights about 3Kg and was called the “Paketkopter”.
The DHL “Paketcopter” quadcopter for urgent deliveries – Source
The test flights required permission from local aviation authorities.
The Arendatorovnet youtube channel is quite active recently and three new videos were posted today. These videos are unique in that the quadcopter (and his pilot of course) are apparently experiencing a total freedom of movement in the Island of Ko Samui in Thailand. This is of great inspiration for me, and possibly many other FPV enthusiasts, in relation of what First Person View (FPV) is about.
Those last videos were apparently recorded on the down/ground side of the video link and are likely close to what the pilot was actually seeing in his video goggles during navigation. The pilot shows complete control even in a few moments in which the video link looses strength.
In this first video, there is a moment in which the quadcopter stops to “play” with dogs. We have recently noted the interesting relationship between quadcopters and dogs, and this is a nice example. The dogs seem rather scared of the multirotor and do not dare approaching too much, although they indeed show interest. This starts at 14:35 of the following video, FPV Taras 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHaLdpE_Dzo
Low quality, video interferences and the “electronic background” audio on these last videos provides a special flavour to them, contributing to making the whole thing very special. Here are the other 2 videos.
FPV Taras 4. See how the quad greets people with a little oscillation, for example at 6:25
We have recently discussed the importance of security in the world of quadcopters and multirotors and indeed security is at the heart of the ongoing debate on FAA regulations of the US airspace in relation to RC models, that of course include our beloved multirotors.
In our previous article we had noted how, in a presentation of Prof. Raffaello D’Andrea from the ETH Zurich, there is a bit of extreme interest for the security of quadcopter flights: Prof. D’Andrea showed that on cutting out two propellers from a quadcopter, the machine can still fly by adopting a different flight pattern, in which the quad continuously rotates on itself (yaws). Not very practical for shooting some stable video, but possibly great to avoid a crash.
And indeed the team of Prof. D’andrea now expanded on this part of the research and presented a video in which the same mechanism, a failsafe algorithm, is activated automatically during flight on a propeller failure.
Hopefuly we might see this as a selectable option on the next generation of flight controllers. DJI, what about implementing this on the next NAZA update? We might read some less news on quadcopters falling from the sky of Manhattan maybe and flying a quadcopter near people could become slightly less of a concern.
Next we’d like to see some efficient automatic avoidance mechanism. This would be another piece of the puzzle that needs to be completed to make multirotors really secure in a near future.
Just stumbled upon a video from Flite Test that features the Stingray 500, a full collective pitch 3D quadcopter Curtis Youngblood. The photos posted below are from the Flite Test review page on the Stingray 500.
The Stingray 500 by Curtis Youngblood
Here’s the Flite Test Video on youtube that features an interview to Curtis Youngblood and test flight of the Stingray:
If you look closely at the propellers, you will see that these look more that helicopter blades than normal multirotor propellers.
Indeed the propellers have a variable orientation that is the secret of the 3D flight capabilities of this beautiful flying machine. If you are familiar with the way a normal quadcopter flies you will see from the videos below that the maneuvers that can be performed with the Stingray are plain impossible with a normal multirotor.
The total freedom of movement in the 3D space make the Stingray suitable for Acrobatic flight.
The frame cover is designed to carry 2 cameras at the same time (fpr example a GoPro and a board camera), making this quad great for acrobatic FPV and for taking some very special aerial video.
In the video above Chris Youngblood displays amazing piloting skills, I wonder how easy or difficult is it to fly and perform some basic acrobatics with such a particular machine, so different from a “traditional” quad.
The quad is currently on sale on Curtis Youngblood web site for 799$.
We have been following closely (1–2) the youtube channel of Arendatorovnet, a Thailand based quadcopter enthusiast that is releasing, since a while, some stunning FPV videos.
In the last couple of days three new exciting videos were published that are again worth viewing from start to end. It is a full immersion FPV experience in which the quad really has it’s own life and covers long distances with ease. There must be some solid equipment behind these performances but the technical specifications for the radio and video links are still unreleased at this time.
How about extending multirotor deliveries to the full amazon catalogue (limited to small sized items)? Direct delivery from Amazon to your doorstep in under 30 minutes from the moment you place the order online with the new Amazon Prime Air service.
Here’s the Amazon YouTube video that totalized slightly less than 12 million visits since december 1 2013. In just 5 days this is an amazing page views score. This shows a huge interest from the public that will possibly support the development of the project.
Amazon is realistic and acknowledges that actual implementation of the project could well take a few years. This is a statement on the Amazon page:
“Putting Prime Air into commercial use will take some number of years as we advance the technology and wait for the necessary FAA rules and regulations.”
However right below, in the same page FAQ section, we read:
“Q: When will I be able to choose Prime Air as a delivery option? A: We hope the FAA’s rules will be in place as early as sometime in 2015. We will be ready at that time.”
Amazon Prime Air octocopter – Click for high res versionAmazon Prime Air – Click for high res version
Indeed, the development of such a multirotor based service will have to deal closely with FAA and it’s regulations. Current rules allow flying any RC model, with a number of restrains, but commercial services require an explicit permit from FAA to be carried out. This is the base for the well know story of Raphael Pirker and the FAA commercial flying ban, where Raphael Pirker aka “Trappy”, funder of Team Black Sheep, was issued a 10.000$ fine by FAA for taking some aerial footage, for money, of the University of Virginia. We covered the story here.
Would FAA allow Amazon to launch such a service, as described in the promotional video above, tomorrow? Likely not for a number of very good reasons in my opinion.
JAmazon CEO Jeff Bezos presents the new Amazon Prime Air multirotor based delivery service
A number of safety concerns are involved in such a project. The machine itself must be full proof with redundant control and power systems. Research required in this field as the technology is still relatively new. What kind of avoidance systems will be in place? Camera/video based? Sonar based? Both? Research required. How do you deal with the dogs welcome committee at landing? (see here). How do you ensure reliable and secure delivery, after all a packet is just left on a front yard, a number of things could happen before the customer actually get it in his hands.
Here’s a video that discusses a number of potential issues:
Despite all these problems to be solved, some kind of minor issues, other more serious, It looks to me that it’s just a matter of time before we get to see drones delivering items to our doorstep. The questions is not really if we are going to see this, but when.
A quest toward the perfect quadcopter or multirotor for aerial video and personal flying freedom and a permanent survey on the latest quadcopter news and multirotor news
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