The FAA will soon allow commercial drones to fly in U.S. airspace, but researchers have found that they aren’t seen as much of a nuisance at all.
By Richard Conniff
By Richard Conniff
When people debate the coming era of civilian drones, they probably aren’t taking into account the strange thing that happened at a Texas A&M student production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Brittany A. Duncan, a doctoral candidate at the university, and her faculty adviser, a professor of computer science and engineering named Robin R. Murphy, were on the team providing technical support for the micro-helicopters and the AirRobot quadcopter-style drone that were used to represent fairies. In rehearsals, the actors tended to behave as if the AirRobot—roughly the diameter of a large pizza, with four exposed rotors—were as safe as the fist-size micro-helicopters. So Murphy urged them to think of the AirRobot as “the flying weedwacker of death.” But when audiences also displayed a high level of comfort, she began to wonder whether small drones “are just not scary to people."
Full article here: People and Drones
Comments
And then they all drove down to the local brewpub to celebrate the publication.
Nice catch John. I had forgotten about Chris' earlier post.
Regards,
TCIII Admin
More about the story from Texas &M can be read on this earlier DIYD blog post.
I think we're talking about to different problems here.
the stories we've been getting in the news are about the fear of drones being used to spy on people. this has nothing to do with the safely of the robot itself which is what this story is about.
the problem is a quad can do a lot of damage to the human body but most people believe that which will lead to people getting hurt.
Really sad indeed.
This is quite a different perspective from what we have seen in recent articles published here on DIY Drones.
Regards,
TCIII Admin