'Hot' pizza delivery drone for PM Abe

[Samurai_Jerk]

I understand the difference and I'm for some kind of regulation if needed but I think blanket bans in public parks and the like are silly. I also think a lot of these things can be handled with current laws regarding photographing and filming in public. Japan is already much stricter than a lot of other countries when it comes to that kind of thing.

[matsuki]

Average drone lethality would be between kicked football nd fast frisbee.
Below bat-thrown baseball...
Wayyy below "idiot on a bicycle"

Time to stop the bullshit methink... Most of those dones can be used indoor and taken down by your average housecat...

I was more or less picturing the photog oriented octocopters....which are bigger and beefier than the smaller hobby quadcopters



They're the new "must have" among all the video people I know.

[Coligny]

And you realize that the heaviest part here is the slr camera...
So lethality: camera falling from the sky...

[Wage Slave]

And you realize that the heaviest part here is the slr camera...
So lethality: camera falling from the sky...

Or crashing into you, possibly while driving or riding a bike. That's a significant hazard isn't it?

To be clear I am not saying there should be a ban on using these things everywhere. I am saying that they shouldn't be allowed to fly everywhere and that the people who operate them and pilot them need to be trained, tested and doing it properly.

[matsuki]

And you realize that the heaviest part here is the slr camera...
So lethality: camera falling from the sky...

Hockey puck weighs 156-170g and there have been everything from deaths to brain damage. SLR's weigh what...10-15 times more than that? Just saying it's probably not the best idea to let just anyone fly anything over people....especially crowds.

Also....karma is a bitch:

[Coligny]

And you realize that the heaviest part here is the slr camera...
So lethality: camera falling from the sky...

Or crashing into you, possibly while driving or riding a bike. That's a significant hazard isn't it?

To be clear I am not saying there should be a ban on using these things everywhere. I am saying that they shouldn't be allowed to fly everywhere and that the people who operate them and pilot them need to be trained, tested and doing it properly.

Same as kid playing football and the ball is kicked too hard and escape from the field.

Might as well make gravity illegal and jail that newton guy...

[Coligny]

And you realize that the heaviest part here is the slr camera...
So lethality: camera falling from the sky...

Hockey puck weighs 156-170g and there have been everything from deaths to brain damage. SLR's weigh what...10-15 times more than that? Just saying it's probably not the best idea to let just anyone fly anything over people....especially crowds.

Also....karma is a bitch:

Weight x speed - drag x distance = strenght of impact
(With drag relatied to speed, and you need to factor in that pesky 9.8N per sumthing too)

Yea, it's ballistics... Like golf, airsoft, tennis...

No need for people to loose their shit because it's called the same name than the stuff used to kill arabs in Dirkastan...

Treating hobby drone this way is like regulating kids trike the same way as M1A2 battletanks.

You are much more likely to catch crabs from a lemur than getting a scratch from bumping into a drone (neither being on purpose). Let's make lemurs illegal first maybe ?

[Wage Slave]

Reminds me of the sort of arguments the gun nuts trot out. Does not compute though isn't as egregious. And actually you aren't allowed to play football in most parks and other public spaces.

[Coligny]

Reminds me of the sort of arguments the gun nuts trot out. Does not compute though isn't as egregious. And actually you aren't allowed to play football in most parks and other public spaces.

Most park in the big T have basketball ground and baseball area with net. I don't see football being forbidden either...

Not sure it's reasonable to mix a device designed to kill with a category of small aircrafts that might scratch you if as a consequence to a pilot error or a mechanical failure they try to share the same airspace as some individual at the same time...

All the current reaction are against airspace intrusion... At most... Not like if someone weaponized one and started to go all zero-dark-thirty against someone...

[Yokohammer]

A fundamental rule of RC flight is: don't fly over people.

Any proper RC club, including ours, has designated flight areas that are away from onlookers, housing, public roads, power lines, etc, etc.

Also, everyone at the club is required to have insurance, just in case. I pay JPY 4,500 every two years to renew my radio control operator's registration and insurance (up to JPY 100,000,000 coverage).

The problem is that where you once almost had to join a club to learn how to fly properly, now you just buy a computer controlled GPS stabilised toy at some random retail outlet or online and it'll fly. Sorta. Traditional aircraft require a bit of skill. Also, dedicated RC shops, which were about the only place you could purchase RC aircraft at one time, were usually affiliated with clubs or ran their own club, providing a convenient, easily accessible training ground for their customers. The experienced guys would not only teach newbies how to build, trim, and fly their aircraft, but they'd drum the rules into their heads pretty well too.

We had our yearly general meeting in April, and everyone is lamenting the fact that it has become so easy to fly RC. Not because we want a monopoly on the esoteric art of flying, but because it means that a few idiots can easily ruin the fun for everyone else. Things were a lot safer when the hurdle was a bit higher.

[Wage Slave]

Reminds me of the sort of arguments the gun nuts trot out. Does not compute though isn't as egregious. And actually you aren't allowed to play football in most parks and other public spaces.

Most park in the big T have basketball ground and baseball area with net. I don't see football being forbidden either...

I would be in favour of providing designated areas for people to play and train like we do for ball games. What isn't acceptable is any fool flying the things anywhere they like.

If you think you can play anything like proper ball games in any random park you like, I would suggest you lack experience in taking children to parks. Trust me.

[Wage Slave]

Yokohammer,

That makes perfect sense and the clubs/enthusiasts should play a huge role in drawing up licensing and regulations.

[matsuki]

Weight x speed - drag x distance = strenght of impact
(With drag relatied to speed, and you need to factor in that pesky 9.8N per sumthing too)

Yea, it's ballistics... Like golf, airsoft, tennis...

I guess I should clarify...there is really high glass (and often nets) around the entire ice arena...so when a puck hits someone in the stands, it's not like getting shot directly with a gun. It goes waaay up and either hits someone while it's being slowed by gravity or at higher angles, goes waaay down and hits someone...and despite what Disney would have you believe, a knuckle puck isn't exactly the most aerodynamic way it travels.

That being said, I'm not trying to make the case that drones are evil and need banning. Just saying that it's not insane to restrict them over large groups of people. Even the experienced users I know are always telling me how often they crash so...

[Coligny]

See yokohammer's post, flying over humans is a no-no.
Outright banning parks...
Maybe in central Tokyo... But 80% of the time here in the parks you share with tanoki, wild pigs, the occasionnal monkey. 20% of the remaining time it's old people and the occasionnal kid... And I'm talking about the big ones with playing grounds, fountains, working loos and so on. Not the secondary one where I was the only lifeform present for a good part of the last 5 years.

Seriously. They managed to be relatively sane with airsoft guns and the 1 joule rule (which still fucking hurts, reason why they are not allowed for foreplay at home anymoar). I somewhat don't see things going too well for drone...
Even if simple restriction could suffice (weight/size/line of sight). Also, quads are -really- not like helos. On a normal hobby quad the blades are around 7cm. While a rc helo is a flying meat grinder.

[Wage Slave]

See yokohammer's post, flying over humans is a no-no.

Tell that to Google. But seriously, I think they are potentially so useful for so many things like inspection of buildings and structures, monitoring traffic, criminal activity and lots more that they should be flown over people. If aeroplanes and helicopters can be, then why not? It's just there needs to be regulation, training and certification.

And sure, if people want to fly them as a hobby or train then there should be spaces available for them. What isn't likely to survive is a presumption that any park or other open public space is fair game. If there is a park so little used that the only occupants are wild animals then that would seem to be a good one for drone pilots to play in. I have to say I haven't seen many like that - and I'm not in Tokyo.

[matsuki]

See yokohammer's post, flying over humans is a no-no.

Tell that to Google. But seriously, I think they are potentially so useful for so many things like inspection of buildings and structures, monitoring traffic, criminal activity and lots more that they should be flown over people. If aeroplanes and helicopters can be, then why not? It's just there needs to be regulation, training and certification.

Used for that stuff, I'm all for it. Idiot kids flying them over crowds...fuck that. Though besides training, how about airbags for the larger ones? (sudden loss of altitude then pop!...they have them for motorcycles)

I actually want one to take some vids/pics of my little piece of nippon...but fuck mounting my SLR's on that shit. GoPro FTW

[Yokohammer]

If aeroplanes and helicopters can be, then why not? It's just there needs to be regulation, training and certification.

Old pilot's adage: altitude is your friend.

Full-size aircraft require special permission to fly below a specified altitude above populated areas, for obvious reasons. RC aircraft, on the other hand, are restricted to flying below a specified altitude (150 meters here, IIRC). If an RC pilot loses control at 30~40 meters, for example, that aircraft can hit the dirt before you even have time to blink.

Now these drone thingies, or at least the better ones, pretty much fly themselves so loss of control may be less likely to cause a catastrophic crash, but the other edge of that sword is that the pilot is at the mercy of the technology, and technology can fail.

If you're flying line-of-sight you really don't have to go very far before you have no freakin' idea which direction your aircraft is facing. It can still be quite visible, but all of a sudden you won't know whether it's flying away from you or toward you, whether it's right-side-up or inverted ... no idea. A lot of RC crashes happen that way.

If you're flying FPV (First Person View) with a video feed you can see where you're going, sorta, but with severely restricted vision. A radio glitch or obstacle can black you out in an instant. So there you are ... you can't see your aircraft, you can't see where you're going ... you are fcuked.

A nice feature of better equipped multicopters (even my early Phantom has this) is auto homing. If you do lose your aircraft you flip a switch and the thing will automatically fly back and land at the spot it took off from, to within about a meter. That procedure also begins automatically if you lose radio contact (you can just turn your transmitter off in a pinch). But ... and it is a big but ... you're still relying on a fallible system to do this. And that's assuming you still have battery power.

There are many, many, many things that can go wrong. There is no 100% safe way to fly.

I personally believe that in order to fly over a crowd, for example, not only should the pilot be properly trained and certified, but the aircraft should be subject to strict checks and certification as well, just like commercial aircraft.

There are exceptions to every rule, of course, like searching for survivors after a disaster, for example. Quite a few drones deployed in Nepal for that purpose, I believe.

But even a little toy drone has the potential to cause serious injury ("poke someone's eye out," as every mother on the planet has said at least once).

[Wage Slave]

Interesting. So still quite a lot to get sorted out both with the aircraft and the piloting/command and control. How far away do you think we are from being able to put drones to significantly more work?

As an aside, I found it profoundly depressing that in Nepal had we wanted to blow up those stranded villages with a variety of aircraft and in a variety of ways it could have been done in an instant from a facility in Arizona or somewhere but at the same time we couldn't get water and food to them for ages.

[Coligny]

http://www.cfijapan.com/study/html/to19 ... ni_Alt.htm

image.jpg

A license system would be fine... Was sure it was 250m... But nope... 500ft it is... 150m...

[Yokohammer]

Interesting. So still quite a lot to get sorted out both with the aircraft and the piloting/command and control. How far away do you think we are from being able to put drones to significantly more work?

Probably no more than a couple of years. The rate of advancement is just breathtaking. Still, you can't have inexperienced 15-year-olds flying RC aircraft over crowds any more than you can have them flying real aircraft.

Not to say that 15-year-olds can't fly. There are quite a few young RC champions who fly rings around the old farts, but they've come up through the ranks and they know and respect the rules.

Anyway, the drones: Just in the year to 18 months since I got my Phantom the whole field has exploded exponentially. The high-end stuff is getting seriously high-end and crossing over into commercial and military use, while the cheap stuff that kids can afford is getting more capable and therefore dangerous at the same time.

By the way, meet Lily:

[matsuki]

Sooo want LILY but Feb 2016 ship date pretty much guarantees there will be improved/cheaper competition before the release. (and ver. 2 shortly after)

[Russell]

Any regulations for flying kites?!?

[Coligny]

Høly fūck...

700kg...

[Samurai_Jerk]

Høly fūck...

700kg...

That's a lot of bamboo and paper.

[Coligny]

Morons...
Morons everywhere...

Next we will have to ban knives ro prevent people from cutting themselves...

[Taro Toporific]

"No drones during the festival!" --The Torigoe shrine management

no-drones.jpg

Via @shilkytouch

[Coligny]

Japan, the country where even the most basic shit can't be done right...

image.jpg

[matsuki]

Høly fūck...

700kg...

That's a lot of bamboo and paper.

When you need a team of people to "control" it, probably not the safest thing to be flying over a crowd...

[wagyl]

"No drones during the festival!" --The Torigoe shrine management

I also noticed a new addition to the signs at the snow monkey park last time I was there, no drones. Only in English, so we can guess who caused a problem and freaked out a pack of wild monkeys while they were having a relaxing bath.

[matsuki]

"No drones during the festival!" --The Torigoe shrine management

I also noticed a new addition to the signs at the snow monkey park last time I was there, no drones. Only in English, so we can guess who caused a problem and freaked out a pack of wild monkeys while they were having a relaxing bath.

Orders from the gov. are one thing but how much teeth do all these "no drones" signs popping up have? (they seem like the usual stern suggestions with no way to enforce or legal recourse)