Blogs

You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!

Join diydrones

Comments

  • Andrew Rabbitt January 10, 2015 at 7:36pm

    It's important for countries to get this right because regulations are rarely changed but rather papered and sticking-plastered over causing a host of inefficiencies over time.  I like Chris's "white space" description of a regulatory model.  In many ways it has already been like this in the model aircraft space and with little negative consequence to the community.  Sure, the availability and frequency of use is dramatically increasing, but for for all this, it takes an internet to record all the imprudent "outliers" to become known about the world.  Still a relatively rare case to upset people and even less so for an injury to occur.

  • Gary McCray January 10, 2015 at 10:29am

    Hopefully Rob, the current situation of Draconian excess and silly rules will not persist and eventually a useful workable solution will be put in place both here and in Canada.

    Unfortunately for the short term it more closely resembles a Keystone Cops debacle than a reasoned solution.

    Politics in the US is a mess generally these days and UAS seems to be an even more extreme example.

    So far a lot of Third World countries are doing a better job than we are, and that's just sad.

  • Rob_Lefebvre January 10, 2015 at 7:06am

    Gary, that's largely why I'm so disappointed by Transport Canada's new regulations.  They teased the idea that commercial operation of >2kg machines would be free and clear.  This would motivate companies to invest in light weight machines with high capability.  However, when the rules finally materialized, there is very little difference between <2kg and >2kg classes.  You have to be 18 to fly >2kg commercially.  And you have to have a fire extinguisher.  Big deal.  There literally is no incentive to fly my small helicopter instead of my big ones.

  • Gary McCray January 9, 2015 at 3:33pm

    Interesting view of the near future.

    Lets all hope that the FAA ends up behaving more rationally than they seem to have done so far.

    I do greatly think that the smaller is better - is safer philosophy is what is going to save us if anything can.

    Hard to get people too incensed about the danger of being attacked by a badminton birdie.

    And from a real danger issue, the Parrot BeBop is already approaching that.

    Privacy is going to be an issue that continues to haunt us, courtesy of our military's current strategy of targeting individual targets from thousands of miles away.

    But as Chris said, cellphone cameras and security cameras everywhere have already changed that landscape.

    The reality is that privacy has decreased enormously, the ads running next to this as I write are custom tuned from companies and products I have bought before.

    - So What?

    Best,

    Gary

  • Rob_Lefebvre January 9, 2015 at 10:33am

    BTW, there's some other interesting commentary from Colin Quinn at CES here:

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbXmPPEXWXA

  • Rob_Lefebvre January 9, 2015 at 8:43am

    That's actually a pretty good discussion.  I liked the FAA conversation.  Chris could also draw a comparison between the FCC and CB Radio as it went down the same way.  In that case, late attempts to regulate failed and now the entire space is virtually unregulated.  They just couldn't get a handle on it.

  • Superwalloon January 9, 2015 at 7:16am

    I just wished more credit would be given to the Arducopter code and community... 

This reply was deleted.