I would like your help. Safety is my number one issue with drones. Last year I was learning to fly my Parrot AR. Drone that I had fitted with carbon fiber blades. I was doing a simple take off and landing in the living room to impress a friend. I was hovering and accidentally hit the "Home" button. Instead of a soft landing the AR Drone took off from a distance of about 10' from me and came right at my face. As I was trying to deflect it, the carbon fiber blade put a gash on my left eye, just missing my eyeball. I don't know about you, but that really soured my experience and nearly put out my eye.
I had every intention of taking the money I had saved to start a Real Estate Photography company. Instead I became afraid of the drone. A friend purchased a Phantom from DJI and had a very similar experience on his very first flight.
Oddly enough I became so fascinated with the industry that started to look for solutions to the danger of any multi-rotor with plastic or carbon fiber blades. I came up with what I affectionately call DroneKone. It is complete and substantial propeller protection to help make drones safer.
I started a small company with my limited funds and developed a model of my concept. I was able to get a provisional patent on my safety device. Then I had a devastating life event and was out of action for a year. I have recovered. I don't have any funding at this point except out of my pocket and started seeking funding. I was told by a potential investor that I needed to survey 100 people to find out if my product is market worthy.
Okay enough story. Simple Survey for Safety:
- Yes or No Are you concerned about drones flying around Children?
- Yes or No Do you have a concern about your personal safety when flying a drone?
- Yes or No If a safety device was available would you consider purchasing it?
- What would a safety device look like to you if you could design one?
- How much would you pay for a safety cage if one was available when you purchase your drone.
I greatly appreciate you reading this far and ask for help. If this is just plain stupid, then I would like to know that now, before I spend any money on moving further.
Thank you so much for listening. I am grateful to be a small part of this awesome community.
bob
Replies
Huques,
Would you use a safety device if one was available?
There is no "single safety device". It must be dozens of safety devices of all kinds : hardware, software, environment monitoring, etc
I would need to buy custom "Lego" parts to fit my custom drones...
Hugues, thank you. I agree it's a bit extreme to say they should be banned, LiPo also catch fire sometimes and drones may fall from the sky now and then .......... it's all part of the risks
Carbon blades give very little tangible benefit, they increase vibration, they don't absorb impact and increase damage to the drone itself in crashes, they are 60x more expensive, they do significantly more damage to people and property...
...and yet people still buy and use them.
Its not 'part of the risks', it is completely unnecessarily making your drone significantly more dangerous than it needs to be. So given there is no sensible reason to be using them and they are responsible for almost every injury used as evidence that the drone hobby is dangerous why not ban them?
By using them you've already proven that you are not sensible enough to have made that decision for yourself.
wow... really. See my earlier post. Might want to back off on the insults their buddy.
"People who've make bad choices shouldn't be trusted not to make bad choices" is not an insult, its a fact.
Paul,
If a safety device had a autodeploying parachute and an air bag to protect from catastrophic failure in the sky, would you put it on your copter?
Please help me on the survey:
I agree.
I feel you shouldn't ever allow the risk to develop in the first place. As long as you are using copters properly they're safe.
It's like using a gun, "guns don't kill people, people do".
any solution for our needs would have to cover 15" to 17" props
Mike,
Good point. Question have you done any estimating of what weight could be added to your Octocopter with 15" props without affecting performance. In dealing with the issue of propeller protection added weight is the first concern, then performance of course.
bob
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