Night flying small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are set to deliver a brand new perspective of Sydney's fireworks spectacular later on this evening.
The Australian Broadcasting Association will be using two sRPAS to assist in the live coverage of Sydney's world famous New Years Eve celebration.
Australian Telecommunications company Telstra will also be flying a pair of specially outfitted sRPAS equipped with 6 GoPros (up, down, front, back, right, left) to provide 360-degree views from above as part of a promotional campaign - with footage from the flight available for viewing via a downloadable app following post production.
Excerpt from itnews.com.au
It (the ABC) plans to send two purpose-built quadcopters equipped with HD cameras and broadcast links 1000 ft above Sydney Harbour, which will feed live video to feature in its annual New Years Eve broadcast, alongside footage from nine harbourside cameras and a manned helicopter.
The remote aircraft will be flown by licenced pilots and will hover within the firework exclusion zone, a spokeswoman explained to iTnews.
The broadcaster has obtained approval from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) to fly the drones at 1000 ft during the event.
"We're thrilled to be able to use this exciting new technology during our broadcast, to give audiences a spectacular and unique view of the world-famous Sydney New Year's Eve Fireworks," said the ABC’s special events boss Justin Holdforth.
The Telstra drones will also fly at 1000ft and feature six HD cameras each. Telstra will make its footage available after the event via a custom Sydney NYE app, to viewers in Australia and overseas.
Comments
Thanks. Your comment is superfluous. I acknowledged that they had CASA's blessing.
"If CASA gave their blessing".
You're missing my point. These drones are basically toys with extremely low fault tolerance. It was flying above the biggest crowd Australia sees each year. It was simply stupidity to allow a multi rotor to fly in that environment. Had there been a LiPo failure, or motor failure or any number of other failures (being ht with pyrotechnic), the potential for it to go off-course and come down in a crowd was high.
@ausdroid - They would have been required to submit a safety case so obviously they did things in a manner that was considered safe. I can think of a few things. They did use the ZeroUAV system which has redundant controller GPS etc and they had extra batteries for longer flight time. Being above 400ft is no issue given there would be no air traffic allowed in the area. They probably flew over an area that wasn't over people or boats as well. I'm sure they would have done test flights to prove it could be done safely. I'm glad they were successful with it. Or maybe I'm wrong and they did what they do in the USA and just decided to get the shot and pay the fines.
Here's the footage.
http://www.9news.com.au/national/2014/12/31/13/34/inspiration-and-s...
I have no idea why or how they were allowed to do this. 1.5 million people below them if something went wrong. Flying above the 400 foot limit. If CASA gave their blessing for this, it makes a mockery out of their entire position on drones.
Cool to see that they've gone and gotten all the right permissions first that's for sure, guess not flying in around the fireworks might be a safety thing, some of the bigger fireworks would just about vaporise a multi if it got in the wrong spot (have worked on a few fireworks shows and the big shots are impressive with the amount of explosive in them) and then rather than paper falling down you'd have bits of motor and batteries flying off who knows where. Unofficial ones on the net wouldn't have had to worry about Health and Safety issues I guess, just out there getting cool shots
One thing for sure is what a great gig for the company involved. Good on them for being the first and taking this on. Congrats.
I doubt we are going to see an extreme fireworks fly through (like the spectacular scenes seen elsewhere) though, as it would seem to be too much of a safety risk to put an unmanned aerial vehicle in the path of explosives... at night... above so many people. But it certainly would look fantastic!
A manned helicopter has more options for cameras/lenses than a quad does. It doesn't need to be nearly as close to get the same shot and probably at much higher quality. Of course, it does cost more. Getting close isn't the aim, getting a unique shot is.
The only thing a UAV can do that a full size copter can't is to get in to the fireworks themselves. I've seen it done before and it's simply awesome. It's great that they are doing this but if they are 400mtr away then it's not going to appear any different then if it was done with conventional equipment. The 3D application is an example of doing something new and innovative and I'm really looking forward to seeing it.
Regardless, the Sydney fireworks are just amazing so it's cool that people are trying new things.
I would have thought the best use of these would be getting footage much closer than a manned helicopter could. Otherwise, what's the point? I was hoping they would fly through the fireworks.
The Telstra app sounds great but good luck getting any HD video to move across the crappy bandwidth we all live with here in Australia which is largely due to Telstra and politics.
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