The chief executive of a consumer drone maker wants the cowboys who have tarnished the name of the hobby to have their wings clipped.
Chris Anderson, the co-founder and chief executive of 3D Robotics, has even coined a term for the phenomenon: “mass jackassery”.
“[It’s] bad and it’s going to get worse. And if we don’t do something about it, no one’s been killed yet, but someone’s going to do something really stupid,” he said.
Witness the drone which crash landed in the stadium last week during a tennis match at the US Open. Read about the increasing number of drone sightings by pilots of civilian aircraft. Or listen to the complaints made by firefighters and emergency workers when drones interfere with their work.
And the rise in these kinds of incidents have resulted in some people taking the law into their own hands. And it’s not just humans. Even chimpanzees are taken to bringing down snooping drones.
“One of the ironies of this drone age is that because we’ve made drones so easy to fly and the process of learning to fly and all the safety and responsibility lessons that come with it are now no longer required,” Anderson said.
“As a result, all that wisdom about safe and responsible flight doesn’t come automatically. A bunch of people are doing dumb things. Not because they’re bad or evil; just because they don’t know better.”
SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM
But he’s not arguing for more regulation. Governments all over the world struggle to keep up with technological changes and concerns about the safety and privacy implications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The solution, says Anderson, needs to come from the industry itself with the use of software to “geofence” drones so that they cannot fly where they are not supposed to.
And as a best-selling author, long-time editor of WIRED magazine and now the boss of a start-up cranking out hardware that supports that storytelling, he above all should know such a golden age when he sees one.
He says we’re now in the third era of consumer drones. The first was getting them to fly. The second was attaching cameras and stabilising them enough to be able to shoot good video.
“But it turns out that is not enough,” he says. “We’d rather be in front of the camera instead of behind it. We’d rather be the stars of the movie, not the directors of our movies.”
Just as software will solve the problem of the aerial pests and triumph over the hardware-first philosophy of his leading competitor, so too has it ushered in the third era. And it has done this by taking the variables out of piloting a drone and replaced it with push-button autonomy.
“We think that what makes drones special is that they don’t have to be piloted, they are autonomous. You don’t have to be sitting behind the camera like a nerd with sticks. You’re just living your life and the drones can capture the moment.”
“Using the smartness of the drone to inform the user about how to responsibly behave is ultimately how we’re going to solve this problem,” he said.
In New Zealand, drones are still a novelty hobby pursued by a few. But just as in the US, the market is growing and going mainstream. Most major electronic goods retailers now stock one or more drone models, and with Christmas around the corner, you can expect to see many more of them popping up in the wide open yonder over summer.
Anderson acknowledges that taking away market share is going to be a challenge. “DJI is definitely the market leader and they’re a great company,” he said.
CAPTURING THE MOMENT
Anderson calls this the golden age of personal storytelling.
And as a best-selling author, long-time editor of WIRED magazine and now the boss of a start-up cranking out hardware that supports that storytelling, he above all should know such a golden age when he sees one.
He says we’re now in the third era of consumer drones. The first was getting them to fly. The second was attaching cameras and stabilising them enough to be able to shoot good video.
“But it turns out that is not enough,” he says. “We’d rather be in front of the camera instead of behind it. We’d rather be the stars of the movie, not the directors of our movies.”
Just as software will solve the problem of the aerial pests and triumph over the hardware-first philosophy of his leading competitor, so too has it ushered in the third era. And it has done this by taking the variables out of piloting a drone and replaced it with push-button autonomy.
“We think that what makes drones special is that they don’t have to be piloted, they are autonomous. You don’t have to be sitting behind the camera like a nerd with sticks. You’re just living your life and the drones can capture the moment.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/gadgets/71811380/rise-of-mass-jackassery-in-the-drone-community
