
Small Drones Deserve Sensible Regulation - jonbaer
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/small-drones-deserve-sensible-regulation
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eliteraspberrie
The first step would be to define "drone." Hobbyists have flown RC planes for
decades, with little regulation, and haven't been bothering anyone. That
hasn't changed. What did change is the use of drones by governments.

Regulation will probably be sold as protecting people from government drones,
but I have a feeling those regulations will apply to everyone _except_ the
government.

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flyinglizard
R/C airplanes were pretty limited by three factors:

1\. Mostly fixed wings airplanes, these needed dedicated airfields to operate.
You wouldn't see them in NYC streets;

2\. Hobby grade equipment meant you actually needed to know what you were
doing to fly these. The barriers to entry were high enough to keep the average
joe out of flying;

3\. Most importantly, all piloting was done using simple radios with limited
range and line of sight requirement.

Now all of it changed. We have aircraft which are not exactly R/C anymore; a
3DR Iris is a fully autonomous vehicle that can go anywhere you tell it,
within few miles. A DJI Phantom Vision is something you can buy on Amazon or
B&H that you fly using a video downlink to your mobile and it can go far
beyond where you'd normally fly an R/C airplane. Both are multirotors that
take off vertically and anywhere, and both of these aircraft can take high
resolution, stabilized videos of anything in their path.

I agree with you that any regulation will only burden individuals and not the
government; I also think that this regulation will be proven ineffective as
consumer drone technology of today mostly originates in China. Also, this area
is simply too intriguing for many people to just regulate away.

~~~
eaurouge
A few corrections:

\- Yes, airplanes need more room for takeoff, but you don't need a dedicated
airfield. Most streets would do fine, provided you don't have to scale nearby
structures, such as tall buildings in NYC.

\- You can fly airplanes autonomously too. In fact, because airplanes can
coast without expending energy, they can fly much higher than multicopters
which need constant power output to remain aloft.

\- Tighter control of multicopters means they are easily maneuvered, but you
can also take high-resolution images with airplanes.

\- US regulations would restrict what a pilot can do in the US; regardless of
where the craft was designed or manufactured.

\- DJI appears to be based in China, but Parrot SA (AR Drone) is French and 3D
Robotics (the company behind the open-source ArduCopter) is based in San
Diego. So it's wrong to say the tech originates mostly from China.

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asynchronous13
The article started out well, but then ....

US vs Causby established that a landowner owns the airspace up to what the
land owner occupies or uses. If you have a two-story house, you can legally
claim a higher airspace than your neighbor with a one-story house. The article
implies that property rights extend to several hundred feet above ground
level, which is simply not supported by any US law.

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davesque
There have been a lot of technologies springing up in the last decade which
have challenged society to re-evaluate what it considers to be important. It's
an exciting (and scary) time to be alive. Interesting to see an article with a
more favorable (perhaps more sober?) view on drone technology.

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codezero
On one hand the article argues for less regulation, but acknowledges that
people already can record video of your back yard and it's completely legal.
This seems contradictory, am I missing something?

