People tend to assume that UAVs will be used by the police to keep watch on us, but as this video, taken by a RoboKopter of riots in Warsaw, shows, they can equally be used by citizens to keep tabs on the police. No need to wait for the local news to send a helicopter to get the aerial scene of a demonstration, just Do It Yourself!
Via Kottke
Comments
Selling video for a TV station is a hard task. They don't want antything less than perfecly steady shot, and filmed with at least Canon 5D. If not they don't want to take credit for it as this is considered as a bad marketing move.
Canon 550D is recording in fullHD so the resolution is not the problem, in this case shaking/random camera movements and content itself is quite random.
@Robert 'The pilot said nobody paid for the clips and now they are airing them in national TV.'
He just must stress the flying was amateur and he had a lot of fun of it, then ok without any permission.
Not sure how was it substandard for professional use: there is no other technology delivering such shots from this perspective/altitude at this level of detail, particularly at this given moment. Was it the compression artifacts, shaking or else? No cute news chick was floating in front of the camera with hairs flying as in men's magazine photoshoot?
It's hard to predict the outcome of this totally oblivious flying.
For sure the attention on DIY UAV has been enormous in last days, and the results can be either good as someone will see big potential in this, or more probable I would expect from politicians and police forces order to arrest the operator in situations like this.
@ Krzysztof Bosak
Well i know the man and the machine quite well. I also know what copter is capable of ( in the good way), and what is the operator capable of ( in the bad way), the quality of shots is substandard for commercial use, thats why probably nobody paid for it ( happened before).
The pilot said nobody paid for the clips and now they are airing them in national TV.
@Robert 'despite terrible quality'
I wouldn't say it is terrible quality given that air thickness and overall situation. What is not matching your expectations?
Considering what he did, he used and airship flying in CTR zone of EPWA. An airship without certification of type required to obtain reg. numbers plus transponder and constant contact with ATC cannot enter the airpspace and he broke the law.
The law is stupid, made for protecting companies doing heavy military birds (which are no more in Poland thanks to Solidarity movement) and overly picky for any innovative system so nobody cares. It is not a surprise that a group of peasants and workers is limiting any other activity in order to keep the power with every mean possible.
There was a high risk that if something goes wrong when medical cars were cut off, there would be medevac helo landing in a street zone guarded by police in order to pick one of those privileged ones. Then the potential risk of collision or rather of pilot retrying landing attemp spotting anything in the air, would be high.
The guy did excellent job, but completely outdated ATC ruleset made him break the law in the most serious place in most serious part of airspace in the country.
This is not a big deal as every university that test-flies his plane for 'non-recrational and non-sport-competition purposes' is flying UAV-by-the-law what cannot be certified since it is the maiden flight, therefore requires PAŻP permission per flight with 14 day advance what they never have, consequently some 6 universities broke the law last year maybe 50 times and maybe 1000 times in the past decade. Since they broke the law they must return their EU par of the funding in most cases, according to the rules. This means there will be heavy fight to forgive anybody in the area or a single whistleblower can screw the whole centrally-planned part of false economy.
in response to Daniel G's comments i don't think the cops would shoot it down i think at least initially they would assume that it was theirs, but did not know who had authorized it, the thinking would be something like this officer A says: " well its real high tech so it must be ours. officer B replies "oh yea i herd a rumor we had bought one of those, but this is the first time i have seen it "
situations like these riots are very chaotic and i doubt any one on the ground that saw it would think it was not the cops so i think the pilot would have the benefit of the doubt where cops are concerned and probably most of the rioters thought it was the cops as well
it is a really good idea ! This should be done in every country !
I think mmwarszawa was the buyer, possibly they hired him.
I will check on that.
Pilot stated that he had a "permission" to flight, bt i somehow don't belive in that.
BTW, if anyone was curious, the platform is a Y6 with a Canon DSLR:
Credit goes here:
http://www.mmwarszawa.pl/393137/2011/11/11/zamieszki-w-warszawie-z-...
I also don't own a TV and I was able to find these videos in many places on the web, but I was curious who actually paid for it.
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