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Ohio College Building Indoor Drone Pavilion 42

Posted by samzenpus from the a-place-to-fly dept.
First time accepted submitter Greenargie points out this story about an indoor flying pavilion for drones being built at a college in southwestern Ohio. An indoor flying pavilion for students to test and fly drones will be built at a college in southwestern Ohio. Sinclair Community College officials say the 40-foot high pavilion resembling a traditional aircraft hangar will be built adjacent to a building in Dayton that houses some of its education and training programs in unmanned aerial systems and aviation. The indoor pavilion will allow students to fly drones without having to deal with weather issues or Federal Aviation Administration restrictions on flying them outdoors, said Andrew Shepherd, director of Sinclair's unmanned aerial systems program. Congress has directed the FAA to integrate drones into civilian manned airspace by next fall. The agency currently allows unmanned aircraft to be flown only under controlled conditions.
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Ohio College Building Indoor Drone Pavilion More

Ohio College Building Indoor Drone Pavilion

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  • Did it just become cool to call every unmanned aircraft a drone, after we started murdering people with them?

    No one called toy helicopters drones 8 years ago. No one.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bulled ( 956533 )
      Becase drone makes a headline more catchy than quad-copter or RC helicopter. No one outside of RC aircraft would click something like:

      "Ohio College Building Indoor RC Aircraft Pavilion"

      But call it a drone and now everyone is all over it.
    • >Did it just become cool to call every unmanned aircraft a drone, after we started murdering people with them?

      No, it did not.


      >No one called toy helicopters drones 8 years ago. No one.

      And we still don't. You seem to be unable to tell the difference between an RC helicopter that can only be used in line of site, from a drone, a remotely operated vehicle with onboard camera that does not need to be in line of sight.

      • I've been trying to make a point of acknowledging when people make good points in response to things I say.

        This is a pretty good point.

        • >I've been trying to make a point of acknowledging when people make good points in response to things I say.

          Even though I was a dick in my reply. You're alright.
          • Originally, the meaning of "drone" in relation to vehicles meant it was autonomous, with no pilot at all. It had nothing at all to do with line of sight. But Now it is often used to mean remotely-operated craft, regardless of whether they have any autonomous capability, but that's very different indeed from the original.

            The word "drone" essentially meant "no human pilot", even a remote one. And it's still that way in a lot of dictionaries.

    • Drone.. a convenient one syllable word with a nice ring to it. This is still the best one I've seen [youtube.com]. One motor, and it can bump into things without crashing.

    • What changed everything was the ability to operate beyond visual range - that was really limiting.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Did it just become cool to call every unmanned aircraft a drone, after we started murdering people with them?

      No one called toy helicopters drones 8 years ago. No one.

      Because a modern quadrotor is much more functional than an RC helicopter.

      There is so much electronics in one that they literally do fly themselves. Push a button and they lift themselves off the ground and hover there automatically - something that no RC helicopter can do without continuous input by the pilot.

      So while you fly an RC helicopter,

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mrops ( 927562 )

        $1000 is way too much. I can build one for $300 that can take off, take (waypoint/altitude) mission off an Android device or PC (wireless). Navigate all on its own, trigger a few relays or servos (to do what ever) come back and land. Fly time around 17-20 minutes with a payload of 500g and a total weight of say 1.5 kg.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          $1000 is way too much. I can build one for $300 that can take off, take (waypoint/altitude) mission off an Android device or PC (wireless). Navigate all on its own, trigger a few relays or servos (to do what ever) come back and land. Fly time around 17-20 minutes with a payload of 500g and a total weight of say 1.5 kg.

          Well, $1000 is a nice limit showing how functional and automated/autonomous these drones are. Commercial ones are around $1000, and Arducopters can be built from $300-800 depending on all the

    • While I agree with you (even fancy things like a Phantom DJI aren't really drones...they can return to you automatically, but they are still just remote control quadcoptors), this is a university doing it.

      Odds are that many of the people making use of this pavilion will actually be working on things that can be called drones. Seems like a perfect place to experiment with completely autonomous flight since you don't yet have to handle weather and you don't have to worry about bystanders.

    • Like has been said, my personal definition:
      RC Helicoptor/plane: Line of sight control, little to no payload capacity, mostly manual flight.
      Drone: Has capabilities such as beyond line of sight control(and preplanned routes count), automatic flight correction, designed for a task such as collection of video. Something other than 'fly around for the heck of it'.

      Upgrade a RC device enough that you can fly it out of view out of your view, around some object, then have it return and I'll upgrade it to drone sta

    • No one called toy helicopters drones 8 years ago.

      No, but there was an R/C model airplane club years ago (still is, as far as I know) called the Long Island Drone Society (LIDS).

  • Congress has directed the FAA to integrate drones into civilian manned airspace by next fall.

    So, this is to allow mass, warrantless surveillance of the citizens?

    Or to allow the expansion of commercial interests?

    That seems to be the only two things Congress does these days.

    • So, this is to allow mass, warrantless surveillance of the citizens?

      So what? It's also much easier to watch the cops from a safe distance.. Win-win...

  • Your toy airplane is weak if it can't hack it in a light breeze.
    • It would be a lot easier to build, test, and debug a control system if you started with 0 wind and slowly increased to a steady wind and then later begin testing in gusts or random winds, wouldn't it? PID control fine tuning goes a lot faster when you have full control over the inputs.

    • Your toy airplane is weak if it can't hack it in a light breeze.

      If you're designing new drone prototypes, then yes, they can be weak. That is what experimentation is all about.

      But then again, this place will be equipped with a wind tunnel and those can simulate very high winds if required.

      Norris said the renovation will allow more UAS and aviation operations to be combined in one location, providing access to resources including aviation and flight simulators, avionics and engine labs and a wind tunnel.

  • We've been using sports halls to fly RC helicopters in for years - nothing new here.

    • This, sir, is a pavilion!

    • Finally a use of gladatorial games arenaes where the geeky players can WIN!

      Few things are more pathetic than student funded Megabuck Stadias dedicated to barely functional liberal arts students paid to play football, baseball and basketball.

  • My father grew up in Akron, OH, and in the 1930s it had the world's largest building - a no-longer-used airship hangar. My dad and his friends used the hangar to fly microfilm models - http://www.indoorduration.com/... [indoorduration.com] - and I think this is the hanger -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org]

    So indoor model-flying seems to be an Ohio tradition. I know my dad enjoyed doing it as a teenager.

  • Doing work on the Sabbath, even carrying one's child to the temple, is a violation of Talmudic law. What to do, in a practical modern society? The Hasidim came up with a Talmudic hack. Because work inside 'private' spaces such as homes or temples is permitted, they define entire cities as virtually indoors by setting up symbolic wire boundaries next to important roads into the delimited area.

    Could city ordinances be used in this way as a hack on our secular legal code to define symbolic indoor space to fly

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