

Unmanned drone buzzes French police car - greenyoda
http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/20472463/unmanned-drone-buzzes-french-police-car

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gregpilling
I was talking about the concept of using Parrot drones or helicopters to do
news footage and get views above crowds with a guy who has an autonomous
helicopter. He quickly burst the concept by pointing out to me that his
autonomous helicopter has a 6 foot diameter rotor made of carbon fiber. Or in
his words "If I lost control of it over a crowd, what damage do you think two
samurai swords coming in at 30 mph could do to a bunch of people? People that
fly drones over crowds are assholes". (his words, but I thought they were
worth noting)

A Parrot drone is much smaller, but I still wouldn't want to be hit with one,
spinning propellers and all. I had one and found it hard to control with any
wind in the area.

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mseebach
It sounds like basing your drone on a blimp could be practical. It's going to
stay reasonably steady, and it can stay up for a long time with a fairly large
payload. Also, no big moving parts to decapitate people.

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MartinCron
Let's not forget the most important part. Blimps are cool.

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snogglethorpe
On the other hand, they're also pretty big and visible targets... oO;

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MiWDesktopHack
Super cool. This makes me want to go and buy a drone + VR.

Actual youtube link just in case you don't want to visit news corp www's.
<http://youtu.be/ojIz5Mai2Rw>

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n-mx
It feels very much like being there. It probably feels even more so when you
are working the controls. Perhaps this could be provided to shut-in invalids,
or as tourism. Rather than flying their bodies to the other side of the world,
customers would sit at home controlling copters over the Internet. That would
require adding some automated evasive protections.

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zobzu
they're famous for challenging law officers etc to get hits on the videos,
they've done similar stuff in the US, mind you. It's unclear if they're
allowed to go back to the US right now, as they got gear confiscated and got
jailed/sent back once.

I doubt the french cops really care, but purposefully attempting to annoy
officers is probably not a very good idea with or without a drone that is ;)

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beedogs
This seems like something that'd get you locked up in America.

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unemployed
>I'm disappointed that so many cowards are watching our videos, being afraid
of government taking away your liberties at the first sign of you using them.
grow a﻿ pair

(from their youtube link).

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beedogs
Um... not exactly sure what the point of that was?

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VLM
Note that its almost infinitely cheaper to hide a camera on the group than to
put the camera in the air. Or just peek thru the curtains in a window. Fooling
around with non-R/C people using a R/C vehicle has been frowned upon in the
R/C community since the 70s due to obvious danger and liability, so its much
more likely your flying buddies will ostracize you or turn you in resulting in
a human intel victory rather than exotic technological means tracking you down
via doppler D/F techniques or whatever.

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tibbon
I'll take two! It seemed to perform very well.

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linker3000
It's all fun and games until you misjudge the height of an oncoming vehicle
and slam it through the windscreen.

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viraptor
It doesn't even have to be a human error. Birds in/near cities are happy to
attack R/C models. If you see your model you can run away from them, but if
you only have the camera view, you won't see what's happening.

Now think that even slightly cracked propeller will easily break off at 10k+
rpm. When this happened for me, piece of the propeller ended up ~10cm under
the surface of slightly frozen ground. Fortunately it flew straight down after
it broke - I believe it could be lethal if it hit some person instead.

TL;DR, even if you don't make a mistake and can't see a mechanical fault,
flying R/C models can be very dangerous. Flying close to people is
irresponsible even if you're experienced with controlling them.

