drones

North American drone meet takes place in Stephentown

Posted on by mecicon

by

stevensonfpv

By: Asa Stackel

In Stephentown around noontime Friday, they weren’t the drones you’re used to.  Flying in a park field of NY-22 were fixed wing FPVs or First Person View drones. With the goggles, it’s like you’re actually on the aircraft.

“We fly it FPV, through this little camera here. The video transmits through this little antenna here,” said Josh Noone, drone pilot.

Josh, along with almost a hundred pilots from across North America are in Stephentown flying all kinds of FPV drones. Most build those foam “spec wings” themselves and most do it just for fun.  But that doesn’t mean they aren’t concerned with the controversy surrounding drones.

“Drones get a bad rep, unfortunately, I think there’s a lot of paranoia with the cameras that are attached,” said Thomas McCullough, NEFVP.

Adam Sloan of Birds Eye View Aerobotics sells a drone that can lift vertically like a helicopter and fly forward like a plane. Hobbyists use it, but it’s used in mapping, power line inspection, and agriculture.

“I just think the FAA has been dragging their feet on this technology for over ten years,” said Sloan.

Right now, each person interested in flying to make money has to get specific permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly. Sloan wants the FAA to relax the rules.

“I would like to see some common sense guidelines. We never have any need to go above 400 feet, manned aircraft have no need to come below 500 feet. There’s already natural stratification there,” said Sloan.

Unlike Adam, Most drone pilots are in Stephentown for fun.

“When they rip through the finish line, it’s like wah, wah, wah. It sounds awesome,” said Noone.

They just everyone to know how fun it is.

 

 

http://wnyt.com/article/stories/s3879747.shtml

 

Drones used to monitor bears send their heart rates through the roof

Posted on by mecicon

Hear rate monitors revealed higher stress levels than visible activity indicated.

by


Current Biology

Wildlife researchers have long struggled with removing the human element whenever possible, so as to monitor patterns like mating and migration without getting in the way. Hidden cameras help, but can only provide so much data. In recent years, camera-mounted drones have been considered for research, and the short-term data looked promising; in particular, anecdotal evidence suggested animals weren’t changing their activity much with drones flying overhead.

A research team at the University of Minnesota wondered if anything unseen might be happening during drone studies. So they put biologger collars on four adult bears and two cubs, then flew drones an average of 21 meters above their heads (and an average of 215 meters absolute distance) for five-minute spans. The results, published in Current Biology on Thursday, included a noticeable heart rate spike for all flown-over bears while the crafts were overhead.

In those five-minute windows, one bear’s heart rate climbed all the way from 41 beats per minute to 162, while the rest of the bears saw beats-per-minute jumps as low as 30 and as high as 80. Still, each bear had the spike in common, along with a resulting drop to a normal heartrate shortly afterward. This came despite a seeming lack of visible response, with the exception of one bear that appeared to react. The bears in the study included two mama bears and their respective cubs; a lone male bear; and a female bear on the verge of hibernation.

The study noted that the bears’ relatively quick heart rate recovery may be influenced by living in close proximity to human activity like farming and automobiles, but added that drones have the potential to “induce higher levels of stress” than higher-flying planes. After referring to a similar February study about drones’ impact on bird populations—which didn’t measure heart rate or other invisible stress indicators—the University of Minnesota researchers implored the scientific community to “answer important questions” before expanding research use of drones, “especially with regard to endangered species or areas of refuge.”

A 3DRobotics Iris drone, mounted with a GoPro HERO3+ camera, was used in each test; that drone has since been replaced with an Iris+ model, but even that model’s noise has been described to be “as loud as one thousand bees and a hummingbird.”

Party pooper

Some people certainly didn’t need to read such a story to recognize the ecologically disruptive ecological of unmanned drone aircraft. In at least one case, that’s the whole point.

Ottawa photographer Steve Wambolt started using a drone two years ago to take aerial shots of the city, but after being encouraged by city councilors, he modified his craft to create the “Goosebuster.” As The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, that six-rotor craft, armed with speakers that play the sounds of predatory birds, has been used ever since to shoo Canadian geese, and their pounds of poop, off the Petrie Island beach near his home.

He has since submitted a proposal to the Ottawa city council to expand his vigilante operation to scare the geese away from all city parks. According to the WSJ report, however, he has received opposition from the very councilor who asked for goose relief in the first place. Wambolt’s current campaign doesn’t appear to run afoul (yes, pun intended) of Ottawan drone rules, which currently require a permit for devices over 35kg and prohibit operating such devices near airports or higher than 90 meters in the air.

 

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/08/drones-used-to-monitor-bears-send-their-heart-rates-through-the-roof/

 

Related:

http://www.iconaerialmedia.com/2015/08/14/drone-flights-overhead-cause-stress-for-black-bears-study-says/

 

Is It Legal to Shoot Down a Drone Hovering Over Your Property?

Posted on by mecicon
By  
8/14/2015_drones
An airplane flies over a drone in Coney Island, New York January 1. Calling the police may be best, but how long should you have to wait to verify a threat before destroying it, the author asks. Carlo Allegri/Reuters

This article first appeared on The Daily Signal.

Lawmakers are responding to controversies involving drones in neighborhoods, where increasing use (even for pizza delivery) is raising national debates over rights to privacy, property and self-defense.

One operator flew his drone dangerously close to a passenger plane on its final approach to a Dallas airport. Another stopped fire-fighting helicopters from extinguishing wildfires. One even dropped 65.4 grams of marijuana, 6.6 grams of heroin and 144.5 grams of tobacco into a crowded prison yard.

And in a “drunken misadventure,” a National Geospatial Intelligence Agency employee crashed a drone onto the White House lawn. The Secret Service could have destroyed that drone.

But if your neighbor’s drone comes onto your lawn, and if it is equipped with a camera or some unwelcome item, can you shoot it down without being arrested?

A teenage girl was sunbathing in her backyard in Hillview, Kentucky when she saw a drone equipped with a camera hovering overhead, something that she, quite reasonably, found creepy. She alerted her father, who recalls:

I went and got my shotgun and I said, “I’m not going to do anything unless it’s directly over my property.” Within a minute or so, here it came. It was hovering over top of my property, and I shot it out of the sky. I didn’t shoot across the road, I didn’t shoot across my neighbor’s fences, I shot directly into the air.

The father defends his decision:

You know, when you’re in your own property, within a six-foot privacy fence, you have the expectation of privacy. We don’t know if he was looking at the girls. We don’t know if he was looking for something to steal. To me, it was the same as trespassing.

For defending against the unknown, he was arrested and charged with felony wanton endangerment and criminal mischief. And he’s not alone.

A New Jersey resident who shot down a neighbor’s drone was arrested and charged with possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and criminal mischief.

After a Californian shot down a neighbor’s drone thinking “it was a CIA surveillance device,” the drone’s owner won a suit in a small claims court that found the man “acted unreasonably…regardless of whether it was over his property or not.” The drone owner’s attorney stated that “you’re only privileged to use reasonable force in defense of property. Shooting a shotgun at this thing that isn’t threatening your property isn’t reasonable.”

The problem, however, is that unlike pedestrian trespass, your options for removing drones from your property are limited. More troubling is this: How do you know when a drone is truly threatening?

As Michael Froomkin, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law, writes, neither the law nor technology has developed far enough to clarify what constitutes a threat and what measure of self-help is appropriate.

As long as homeowners justifiably believe that a drone entering their property conveys a threat, and act reasonably, they should be permitted to defend against it. “Reasonableness” is an ad hoc determination.

For example, what if a drone carrying a harmless bubble-blowing machine entered your yard, but that machine looked like a weapon? Calling the police is the best response, but how long should someone have to wait to verify a threat before destroying it?

Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington School of Law, writes, “[T]he lack of a coherent mental model of privacy harm helps account for the lag between the advancement of technology and privacy law.” But not so in criminal law, where tough-on-crime mania routinely drives quick application of broadly phrased statutes to new contexts.

This leaves the Kentuckian father believing that “our rights are being trampled daily. Not on a local level only—but on a state and federal level. We need to have some laws in place to handle these things.”

These laws will take many forms as drone technology develops and drones become more common. For example, many states already fine or imprison individuals “for filming or audio recording at a farm without the owner’s consent.”

The Oklahoma legislature is considering a bill that would authorize homeowners to shoot down drones. Residents of Deer Trail, Colorado decided against issuing hunting licenses to townspeople wishing to shoot down drones in their local airspace.

Ultimately, the Federal Aviation Administration has responsibility “for all civil airspace, including that above cities and towns,” and “is working to ensure the safe integration of unmanned aircraft.”

In Washington, Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-California, spoke about drones, urging “regulation of size and type for private use,” “certification” and “specific regulation on the kinds of uses it can be put to.”

But the 2012 FAA Modernization and Reform Act already restricts private drone use to hobby or recreational purposes within the operator’s visual line of sight. The FAA also issued a policy statement entitled “Education, Compliance, and Enforcement of Unauthorized Unmanned Aircraft Systems Operators,” effective August 4.

Clearly, the sky will fill with regulations before it fills with drones. In the meantime, these laws should not over-criminalize the issue by treating those who engage in reasonable self-defense on their own property as criminals.

John Seibler is a visiting legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

http://www.newsweek.com/it-legal-shoot-down-drone-hovering-over-your-property-362878

Canadians Find Another Use for Drones: Chasing Geese

Posted on by mecicon

Entrepreneur looks to rid Ottawa of pesky fowl, but others want to name Canada goose as national bird

Steve Wambolt wants to help clear Ottawa of the Canada Goose by using a squadron of drones to chase away the birds. Photo: Alistair MacDonald/The Wall Street Journal
By

Alistair MacDonald

OTTAWA—Two years ago, photographer Steve Wambolt pitched Ottawa city councilors on a plan to use his drone to take aerial shots of Ottawa. Councilor Bob Monette leaned over with a question: Can that thing be used to chase Canada geese?

Canada geese
Canada geese

“I’m sitting in my suit thinking, this guy is nuts,” Mr. Wambolt said.

But the answer to that question turned out to be yes. Mr. Wambolt’s drone has succeeded where years of sound decoys, dogs and sickly-tasting compounds failed, ridding the city beach on Petrie Island of a goose that can drop 2 pounds of poop a day.

Now Mr. Wambolt has big ambitions. He wants to clear Canada’s capital of the Canada goose, by creating a squadron of drones to be flown from strategic stations around Ottawa.

That could ruffle feathers in a country with a highly conflicted view of the goose to which it has given its name. While reviled for its ability to defecate every 20 minutes, Branta Canadensis is often seen here as a hardy survivor whose noisy migration home in the spring sounds the welcome end of another long winter.

Some Canadians are even leaning toward naming this goose its “national bird,” in the same way the U.S. has the Bald Eagle. The Royal Canadian Geographical Society is currently asking Canadians to choose a national bird by voting online, and plans to lobby the government to make the winner part of national celebrations in 2017 marking 150 years of the country’s confederation.

“Among the first to arrive in spring, and last to leave in winter, they mate for life and both parents share in raising their young,” Canadian novelist Will Ferguson wrote, praising the Canada goose’s loyalty on the geographical society’s website.

“If I’m going to be chased through a public park anyway, I would rather it be by a national emblem,” said Mr. Ferguson, who has written humorous books on Canadian culture.

The prospect of the goose winning the title leaves Mr. Wambolt with a tough pitch: Chasing what could be the national bird out of the nation’s capital.

On a recent visit to Petrie Island, Mr. Wambolt pointed to the rationale for his pitch, the spotless grass.

“I’ll give you a dollar for every piece of poop you find,” he said. “Last year, you couldn’t even walk here for it.”

Canada Geese swim at Andrew Hayden Park. ENLARGE
Canada Geese swim at Andrew Hayden Park. Photo: Alistair MacDonald/The Wall Street Journal

For Petrie Island park janitor André Killeen, Mr. Wambolt’s drone couldn’t have been more welcome. It had been Mr. Killeen’s job to clean up after the 300-odd geese that used to gather on this beach.

“It doesn’t break well, it just smears,” he said. “That drone has been remarkably efficient.”

The Goosebuster, as Mr. Wambolt calls his drone, is 26 inches wide with six rotors. It has a number of modifications, including speakers that blast the sounds of predator birds, such as eagles, hawks and buzzards, a strobe light and a coat of black paint.

“They don’t like the color black,” he said.

The Goosebuster comes as the North American goose population, once in decline, is on the rise. The U.S. government’s Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that last year there were at least 4.8 million Canada geese in North America.

The geese thrive among the manicured lawns of the golf courses and public spaces that they like to graze upon. Left unchecked, urban goose populations can double in size every few years, according to the City of Ottawa.

Mission accomplished on Petrie, Mr. Wambolt is now setting his sights on fresh—albeit soiled—fields.

At Andrew Haydon Park, on the other side of the city, Mr. Wambolt moved stealthily over the rolling lawns clutching his drone.

“What we are looking for is footprints and goose poop,” he said. Within minutes, this former Canadian soldier had spotted an abundance of both. He shook his head in disgust at the piles of poop covering both path and grass.

Soon, Mr. Wambolt spotted a gaggle of geese heading out of the Ottawa River. “Look at that big mama sitting in the middle of them,” he said.

Mr. Wambolt set his drone to the sound of an eagle and flew it up over the geese, sending them fleeing, honking, back toward the river. In repeated flybys, it took only minutes for Mr. Wambolt to herd the entire flock back into the river.

Ridding the parks of the droppings isn’t just about aesthetics, Mr. Wambolt and others say. The waste can contain bacteria ranging from E. coli to listeria and pose a health risk to the children who frequent city parks.

Denise Clarke says her young grandchildren no longer want to come to Andrew Haydon Park, fearful of aggressive geese and their slippery excrement. Canada geese will occasionally attack people when they feel their family is under threat.

“I hope it works,” she said, looking at Mr. Wambolt’s Goosebuster.

Not everybody in the park is a fan of the Goosebuster. Linda Hay had been photographing the “big mama” before Mr. Wambolt’s drone chased it off. The bird was actually a Brant goose from the Arctic, one of 69 different bird species in Andrew Haydon Park, Ms. Hay said.

“They are beautiful, and if you scare the geese, you will scare everything else away,” she said.

Recently, Mr. Wambolt wrote up a proposal to clear all of Ottawa’s parks of geese and submitted it to the city council. But it faces opposition, including from the city councilor, Mr. Monette, who first suggested using the drone to target geese. “I don’t think anybody wants to get rid of them, period,” Mr. Monette said.

In Andrew Haydon Park, Mr. Wambolt’s appearance continued to generate debate among gathering birders about whether the goose was worthy of being a national symbol.

“No, no, no,” said Roy John, a member of the Monday Morning Birders Club. “The Black-capped Chickadee is cheerful in all weathers, it’s tame, it’s friendly, it’s very Canadian,” he said.

The birders’ arrival at the park had sent Mr. Wambolt back to his car, much as he had sent the geese back into the river.

Asked why not the goose for national bird, Mr. John pointed to a path caked in its fecal matter: “Canada geese are everywhere in Canada.”

—Paul Vieira contributed to this article.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/canadians-find-another-use-for-drones-chasing-geese-1439510869

Drones in the Third World: Welcomed as helpers, feared as interlopers

Posted on by mecicon
Rebekah Ausbrook

Shutterstockunkyfrogstock
Drones monitoring against destruction of rainforest is one thing, but replacing people in jobs is another, villagers say.

When most people imagine what a drone expert looks like, more than likely they see a scene from TV or a film of a drone strike: a man in front of a screen controlling a joystick and then, an explosion.

They almost certainly do not imagine Gregor MacLennan. Yet in the fall of 2014, he arrived in Guyana’s dense forest with a backpack full of motors, glue and soldering irons in tow, intent upon building a drone that local communities in the Wapichana region could use to monitor and document how small-scale gold miners rapidly were destroying large sections of treasured rainforest.

MacLennan — program director for Digital Democracy, a non-profit focused on empowering marginalized communities through the use of technology — spent several months working with the people of Guyana to construct a drone that they could independently fly, repair and use as a “tool of reflection” to start community discussions on land use and resource management.

Drones as sustainability and equality tools

In recent years, drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have become a revolutionary tool in the defense of property rights of disenfranchised people such as the villagers in Wapichana.

“These people find it difficult to find the information that they need to prove that they live on this land and that they have the right to it. UAVs help these people level the proverbial playing field,” explained Faine Greenwood, an avid drone hobbyist and field analyst for New America’s International Security Program.

She and MacLennan, along with other experts, spoke at a recent daylong event at New America convened for discussion of critical issues around drones and aerial observation. MacLennan and Greenwood both spoke on a panel devoted to the question of using drones to map property rights.

In the Wapichana territory, MacLennan explained, villagers have been able to capture aerial images using a quadrocopter and then overlay them onto older images to demonstrate the deteriorating condition of the rainforests. Empowerment from within, rather than involvement from outside actors, is Digital Democracy’s goal.

“We want working with technology to be something that reduces inequality and makes them feel like they’re participating more in something that’s happening on their land,” he said. “This was not my technology that I was bringing in or the white man’s technology being brought in from the outside. This was the Wapichana drone.”

MacLennan’s experience in Guyana crystallized a common belief expressed by other participants: UAV technology has clear benefits for community empowerment. Whether through strides in the realm of land use and management or through the advancement of mapping techniques, the conference participants demonstrated that drones undeniably have the potential to mold the future for the better for many people.

Another related theme that emerged was a need for increased local engagement with these new technologies — an ambition often foiled by negative public perceptions about drones.

For example, although MacLennan described positive reactions to the drone technology from the Wapichana villagers, other members of the same property rights panel recalled facing apprehension about UAVs from the very communities they were trying to help with them.

Drones seen as job stealers

Dr. Janina Mera, who uses drones for a land-titling project in small regions of southern Peru, met resistance from local residents who feared this technology would replace their jobs on the ground by automating them. Convincing these villagers that they “were still needed to analyze, interpret and contextualize the images collected by the drones” was imperative to the success of Mera’s work.

For Abi Weaver of the Red Cross, the future success of drones in disaster response will hinge on the success of these efforts to foster local engagement with drones and to neutralize negative assumptions about them. In communities where these negative assumptions have been replaced by optimism and even excitement, residents have come up with applications of drone technologies that humanitarian workers “never could have dreamed of,” said Weaver.

Future progress depends on the ability of international organizations like hers to encourage this community leadership and to develop these technological capacities in regions affected by disaster.

According to Weaver, however, many efforts by the Red Cross to deploy UAVs for humanitarian purposes also have been met with suspicion and distrust. After facilitating extensive discussions with residents in disaster-stricken areas, the Red Cross learned that people had an enhanced aversion to UAVs in post-conflict communities where drones had been weaponized to cause destruction and in areas with increased access to popular media because of the portrayal of drones in film and television.

Weaver described one particular discussion in a slum in Nairobi, which found that many people thought “drones were taking over.”

“Communities don’t feel connected to the benefit that humanitarians are deriving from UAVs. They feel like there’s a flight that goes over the community and all the information is sent to a database or a headquarters elsewhere and they never see the results of that activity,” she noted.

As part of an effort to bridge this gap between the “aspirations of helpers” and the “rights of victims,” the Red Cross has launched projects across the globe to experiment with what Weaver describes as “use cases,” collaborations between the Red Cross and local partners that are intended to experiment with new uses for UAV technology that can address local priorities and improve the perceptions around what drones can do.

Weaver described one such project, based in Peru, that linked the Red Cross with community partners to stitch plastic bags and trash together to create balloons that can assess weather data and in turn help with climate mitigation and adaptation. She also cited a Red Cross team that launched drones in the Netherlands that monitor marathons and large sporting events to try to identify injuries sooner, dispatch medical responders faster and transport critical first aid supplies more efficiently.

On this same panel on disaster response, Patrick Meier, a leader in humanitarian technology and innovation, cited the union of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a Swiss non-profit called Drone Adventures, and local Haitians in 2012 as another successful example of this kind of collaboration in a real disaster scenario.

In 2012, after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Haitian slum of Cité Soleil, the IOM worked with Drone Adventures to train Haitian pilots to fly and maintain drones that could be deployed to conduct initial damage assessments in the region. Within 24 hours, the team had images that could be used to create point clouds and digital terrain models to determine what houses had been destroyed and to assess areas prone to flooding.

Collaborating around good uses may be key

Without such collaborations, concluded Meier, Weaver and MacLennan, people will continue to shy away from and resist the use of drones in their communities, losing out on the enormous benefits the technology could provide them.

Meier and Greenwood, along with Konstantin Kakaes, Matthew Lippincott, Shannon Dosemagen and Serge Wich, have co-authored a primer, “Drones and Aerial Observation: New Technologies for Property Rights, Human Rights, and Global Development.”

For many experts at the event, the future of drone technologies is an exciting and seemingly boundless prospect — with the proper strategies for community engagement in place. Aldo Watanave — whose work uses drone imagery to preserve archaeological sites in Peru — put it concisely. “As we say in Peru,” he explained, “you can’t love what you don’t understand.”

 

 

http://www.newamerica.org/the-weekly-wonk/the-once-and-future-drones/

Will The FAA Soon Regulate UAV Hobbyists?

Posted on by mecicon
Will the alarming increase in near misses between manned and unmanned aircraft cause Congress to give the FAA authority to regulate drone hobbyists?
By Patrick C. Miller

Several months ago, I spoke to an aviation attorney who told me that the Federal Aviation Administration is always seeking to expand its regulatory authority and predicted that the trend would continue with unmanned aerial systems (UAS).

At the time, I didn’t see how the FAA could expand its power a great deal more given that it claimed authority over all U.S. airspace and all aircraft operating in it—manned or unmanned. But in light of the recent increases of close encounters between airliners and drones, it got me to thinking about some of the UAS-related Congressional hearings I’ve seen over the past year.

They almost all included a committee member asking an FAA official what it was doing to protect the flying public from drones. The FAA official would point out that hobbyist operators of unmanned aerial vehicles were likely the culprits, and then tactfully point out that Congress expressly forbids the agency from regulating hobbyist and recreational drone pilots.

Not surprisingly, members of Congress don’t like to hear that they are at least partially to blame for the problem and thus spend little time dwelling on the situation they helped create.

A few weeks ago, another attorney with expertise in UAS law suggested that for reasons of safety, improved regulation and more effective law enforcement, it might be wise to get rid of the distinction between recreational and commercial UAV operators.

Last week while writing a story about the Air Line Pilots Association’s recommendations for improving UAS safety, I noticed that the organization’s white paper was timed to advise members of Congress on what commercial airline pilots hoped would be included in the FAA reauthorization bill known as the Aviation Innovation, Reform and Reauthorization Act (AIRR).

Congress will likely begin hearings on this legislation next month. Although I have yet to hear or see anyone say that the FAA needs increased authority to regulate hobbyists and recreational UAV pilots, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the idea is given serious consideration.

Otherwise, members of Congress will continue to hear that the reason the FAA can’t get amateur drone operators under control is because Congress won’t allow it to. And no politician wants to be left holding that particular bag if a collision between a manned and unmanned aircraft becomes a tragedy.

http://www.uasmagazine.com/blog/article/2015/08/will-the-faa-soon-regulate-uav-hobbyists

Take flight with drone workshops

Posted on by mecicon
 LINDA WHITE

Special to Postmedia Network

durham-drones

Retail giant Amazon’s much-publicized plans to launch a drone-based delivery service is still years away but unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are already in our skies and their use goes well beyond the military.

They’re being used to take incredible aerial photography, assist search-and-rescue crews, monitor and inspect everything from mines and crops to wildlife population, and so much more.

Consumers of all stripes are embracing the technology but without training, permits and proper insurance, they’re putting themselves at unnecessary risk, says Marcus Dickinson, CEO at X4 Drones and a UAV instructor who will be offering introductory and advanced workshops at Durham College this fall.

“People rush out there and buy the biggest, most expensive, shiniest drone they can get,” Dickinson says. “The retailer is under no obligation to make sure their customer is not only educated but insured to fly their UAV and hands them these things that are literally flying chainsaws.”

Too often, drone users rely solely on their unit’s autonomous system and don’t understand how factors like solar flare activity can affect a drone’s GPS. “They either lose their unit, crash their unit or hurt somebody or themselves with their unit,” he says.

Dickinson encourages anyone interested in flying a drone to learn how to manually pilot it first. “Master it,” he says. “Then and only then should you be working with a more complex unit.”

Here’s a look at the workshops he will be offering at Durham College:

Drones – Intro to Flight: The hands-on workshop covers the basics of drone operation and principles of UAV flight, including axis of flight control, wind turbulence and the basics of radio frequencies and transmissions.

“You learn how to fly with a qualified instructor who will offer tips and help you get comfortable with the units,” says Dickinson. “These units have no autonomous capabilities — it’s all manual flight.”

UAV Operator Training: Learn about GPS, compass and barometer technology; make use of semi- and full- autonomous unit functionality; and conduct pre- and post-flight safety checklists. Learn about Transport Canada regulations, insurance requirements, privacy law and municipal bylaws to start your own aerial photography and videography business.

“You’re legally allowed to use drones for wedding photography and real estate but you have to be an incorporated business in order to get drone insurance and you cannot apply for a special flight operation certificate from Transport Canada if you don’t have that insurance,” Dickinson says.

The interest in training continues to grow. “We have found a huge market for educating consumers,” he says. “We also do professional services … and are training skilled workforces on how to safely use these things for higher-risk applications.”

Durham College workshops

Drones – Into to Flight: This three-hour hands-on workshop will be held Sept. 19, 2015. Participants must purchase a drone (approximate cost $70), payable to the instructor at the start of class.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Operator Training: This three-hour workshop will be held Oct. 19, 2015. A GPS-enabled drone is required as well as safety boots, gloves and glasses. The introduction workshop is a prerequisite.

Visit durhamcollege.ca/coned to learn more.

linda.white@rogers.com

http://www.torontosun.com/2015/08/13/take-flight-with-drone-workshops

Drone flights overhead cause stress for black bears, study says

Posted on by mecicon

mother-bear-and-cub

By Lisa Johnson, CBC News

Drones operated by researchers may have unintended consequences for wildlife, warns the lead author of a new study showing the buzzing of unmanned aerial vehicles overhead can leave black bears stressed, with racing hearts.

Researchers flew drones about 20 metres above black bears that were wearing GPS collars and cardiac monitors to measure what effects the unfamiliar noise had on the bears.

Lead author Mark Ditmer said they thought the bears might flee, but they hardly moved at all.

Instead, their heart rates spiked, showing a major stress response.

“For them to mostly stay in one spot, and have this racing heart rate, was a little bit of a surprise for us,” said Ditmer, a postdoctoral researcher in conservation biology at the University of Minnesota who led the study published in Current Biology.

Stress response ‘pretty severe’

The team gathered data on the bears’ movement while the drones flew, with the collars sending a new location every two minutes as the bears ambled through corn fields and aspen forests in northwestern Minnesota.

But they had to wait until the bears were in hibernation before downloading the heart rate data.

The researchers had expected some physiological reaction to the unfamiliar buzzing overhead, but not such a strong response, said Ditmer.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Ditmer.

“It became strikingly obvious that we were seeing a pretty acute stress response that was pretty severe, at least in some cases.”

In the most extreme case — a mother bear with two cubs — the bear’s heart rate spiked to 400 per cent of her resting rate, jumping from 41 beats per minute before the drone flight to 162 beats per minute when the drone circled overhead.

That kind of stress response, which likely also included a surge of adrenalin and other changes, helps a wild animal in a real emergency, but chronically stressed individuals are more susceptible to disease and other problems, said Ditmer.

‘Cautionary tale’

Ditmer and colleagues wanted to look at the bears’ reaction, because drones are increasingly used in research and conservation — not to mention by hobbyists — with little known about their effects on wildlife.

This study was limited to 18 flights over the four adult bears in a zone where federal rules allowed drone flights. Other types of wildlife would respond differently to the unfamiliar sound of a drone, said Ditmer.

Still, he hopes it’s a “cautionary tale” as drone use increases.

“Just because we’re not noticing an animal changing behaviour, that doesn’t mean there’s not some sort of negative response happening.”

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/drone-flights-overhead-cause-stress-for-black-bears-study-says-1.3188549

RCMP investigate after drone nearly hits Eston, Sask. resident

Posted on by mecicon

png0925Npolicememorial03

CBC News

RCMP are investigating after a drone reportedly fell out of the sky and nearly hit a person in Eston, Sask. earlier this month.

Police say on Aug. 1, the drone fell into a tree in a backyard and then almost hit someone who lived on the property.

No one was injured and no property was damaged.

Police removed the drone, which is also known as a ‘small unmanned air vehicle’, from the property and put it in a safe area.

RCMP have contacted Transport Canada and the Town of Eston, which is approximately 209 kilometres southwest of Saskatoon.

As the investigation continues, officials are uncertain as to whether or not any charges will be laid.

According to Transport Canada, if the aircraft weighs less than 35 kilograms and is used for recreational purposes, it can be flown without permission.

However there are a number of rules that must be followed. For example, drones cannot be flown closer than 150 metres to people, animals, buildings, structures, or vehicles.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/rcmp-investigate-after-drone-nearly-hits-eston-sask-resident-1.3190487

Drone Flies Over Brooklyn in NYC’s First FAA-Approved Launch

Posted on by mecicon

By SIMONE WILSON

Aerobo, formerly named Aerocine, is one of the biggest players in the burgeoning U.S. drone industry — but until this Thursday afternoon, the Brooklynites who run it had never been approved by the FAA to fly a drone through home skies.

The drone was launched at 5 p.m. near the company’s offices.

“It was right here in Brooklyn — in Industry City,” Jon Ollwerther, head of communications at Aerobo, says in a brief phone interview on Thursday evening, over the roar of a nearby drone.

In an article on the company’s record-breaking flight, the New York Business Journalcalls Aerobo’s co-founders, NYU alumni Brian Streem and Jeff Brink, “Brooklyn’s Wright brothers.”

From the Journal:

The commercial flight is historic in that the company, Aerobo, is the first to be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, marking the beginning, in a lot of ways, of a whole new industry.

“Though we have conducted many test flights on this airframe and others in our fleet, today is not a test flight, it is for a commercial client,” wrote Jon Ollwerther, vice president of marketing and operations, in an email today to the New York Business Journal. He called commercial drones a potential $20 billion industry.

The drone that Aerobo sent up on Thursday is an Aerobo X8 (approved by the FAA in June) equipped with a camera called RED Epic.

And the ”commercial client” in question is a production company making a film about Brooklyn tech companies, Ollwerther tells Patch.

Aerobo’s drones have completed plenty of FAA-approved flights in other parts of the country, Ollwerther says, but fighting for FAA approval in NYC was another mission entirely.

That’s because drones aren’t allowed fly higher than 200 feet, yet must maintain a 500-foot distance from all buildings (unless building owners give permission) and a five-mile distance from all airports. In a city as tightly packed — and as padded by airports — as NYC, those rules make for a tricky flight path.

But according to Ollwerther, Industry City was perfectly situated, and sufficiently nonresidential, to fit the bill.

Elsewhere in Brooklyn, around exactly the same time as Aerobo’s historic flight, a decidedly less legit drone operation spooked office workers in Brooklyn Heights.

According to the Brooklyn Eagle, a drone was spotted hovering outside 16 Court Street as its on-board camera peeped through office windows on mutiple floors. The drone operator was then reportedly seen “standing on the roof of 189 Montague Street, an office building owned by the Treeline Companies.”

We’ve contacted the FAA about the latter incident, as it appears to break multiple rules in the FAA’s new 2015 guidelines.

In fact, it almost serves as a counter-stunt to Aerobo’s — a ”what not to do” to offset NYC’s first-ever “what to do” in the wild, hard-to-tame arena of personal and commercial drones.

Just one day before, the FAA revealed that pilot sightings of unmanned aircraft (aka, drones) have “increased dramatically over the past year, from a total of 238 sightings in all of 2014, to more than 650 by August 9 of this year.”

http://patch.com/new-york/windsorterrace/drone-flies-over-brooklyn-nycs-first-faa-approved-launch