Drone Makers Add Geofencing To Keep Drones Out of Restricted Airspace (roboticstrends.com) 91
An anonymous reader writes: Two of the biggest drone manufacturers, DJI and 3D Robotics, are adding geofencing systems to their products to keep them out of restricted airspace. DJI's Geospatial Environment Online will be available on current versions of the Phantom, Inspire and Matrice drones, providing updated data on restricted flight zones due to regulation or safety concerns, including forest fires, major stadium events, VIP travel and other circumstances. GEO will also include restrictions around areas such as prisons, power plants and more. GEO, by default, will not allow DJI drones to fly in restricted areas. However, DJI is allowing its users to "temporarily unlock or self-authorize" flights in some locations. 3D Robotics will add the safety information software to its Solo smart drone app, containing basic information about federal guidelines (stay five miles from an airport, for example), national parks, airbases and more.
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English: PILE OF POO
English works it seems. So there seems to be at least support for the ASCII subset.
Oh, goody (Score:3, Informative)
Last I checked, "restricted airspace" for drones included some hilariously large areas - check out what appears to be the official map [knowbeforeyoufly.org]. Note that includes five miles from airports (why I can't legally fly drones at my own house) and anywhere in a national park.
Re:Oh, goody (Score:5, Insightful)
But we can maybe agree that it might be a good idea to not fly around like an idiot near airports?
Re:Oh, goody (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup. Say thanks to those that didn't turn on their brain before turning on their drone and did not fly just inside their fence and at eye level. "There is no law against it, so I can do what I want".
Well. Now we got a law. I hope these idiots are happy now. The solution to those people not thinking for a moment and applying moderation where it would have been sane means that it's now being taken away from us.
Maybe if we did that to our kids again we, as a society, may instill that responsibility again. The older ones here may remember how it was when we were young. We got to play and the rules were, well, vague. But there were some "general" rules that we did have to consider, and at least my parents required me to use common sense when pondering whether something was or was not allowed. And "but you didn't say I can't do that" was not really a suitable excuse when I did something really stupid that I should have known better. And, in turn, if I could not play sensibly with something, it was taken away from me.
Pretty much what happens now. I guess if people fail to learn as kids, what they get as adults pretty much has to be a nanny state...
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Pretty much what happens now. I guess if people fail to learn as kids, what they get as adults pretty much has to be a nanny state...
That, actually, is it.
In many cultures (eg the English speaking ones) children are so insulated from the realities of life that they grow up to be, well, children. So they need a nanny state otherwise their civilizations would go Lord of the Flies pretty quickly.
In other cultures children are encouraged to be responsible and reasonable and not indulged, isolated nor insulated. These children grow up to be adults. They don't need a nanny state because they are grownups.
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Re: Oh, goody (Score:5, Insightful)
You have as much right to use airspace as you have a right to a public road. You just have to follow the rules. The FFAs primary concern is to make sure the airspace is safe for everyone, so ya they can restrict its use.
You can fly a drone near an airport if you contact the tower first. Class C airspace typically goes to the ground near airport. The typical requirement for aircraft is you must be in 2 way communication with the tower.
I do believe that the requirement for commercial drone flight is a bit to harsh. You currently need to hold a private pilot certificate. The intent is if you're already a pilot they know you can read a chart and follow the rules. Additionally you need to file a section 333 exemption and wait 4 months to give you the same boiler plate exemption they are giving to everyone else. Really this is a temporary measure thats is probably going to take far too long. The exemption that they give comes with restrictions that pretty clearly spells out what they view the requirements should be.
On the other hand non commercial use is a bit too permissive. You should at least have to pass a simple training course, so you at least know what not to do.
If you contact the airport before flight you can fly in your back yard near and airport as a "hobbiest".
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The regulations on commercial flight are harsh but they're also not law. At this point in time it's not clear whether they can regulate model aircraft at all, let alone ones used in a commercial capacity.
Section 333 exemptions are being used to seek the FAA's blessing for commercial use in advance of actual laws, though this was supposedly not the intended use of the process.
At this point, the only enforcement tool the FAA has is the ability to fine drone pilots for unsafe flight around people and other air
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You have as much right to use airspace as you have a right to a public road.
The biggest problem with that analogy is that public roads are a relatively small space which the government either homesteaded or purchased—perhaps using eminent domain, which is a whole other issue, but at least paying some compensation to the former owner. You can drive however you want on private property (with the consent of the owner), including private roads. But the government claims every bit of above-ground outdoor as "public airspace" under their jurisdiction, leaving nothing for private us
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Comments like this, and the resultant behavior, is why you're gonna end up with draconian restrictions. "Oh but I won't listen to those fuckers!" True, but that's not why they make laws. They make them so they can find and impose harsh penalties. "They can't find me!" Perhaps also true, they need only be lucky once - you need to be lucky every time.
You had options. Instead, you let sexconker, and people similar, speak on your behalf. I dare say, we've had this conversation before. It's unfortunate because I
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I get airports (though the 5 mile radius may be debateable), but national parks... surely that's just commercial interrests?
Re:Oh, goody (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, it's for the visitors to the park to enjoy the peace and quiet. I'd be happy to let planes fly over, as soon as the planes carry enough sound-proofing to make them inaudible from the ground.
Last time we were in Sequoia National Park, we climbed Moro Rock. Apart from our fellow tourists, the only sounds were natural. As we stood on the top, a couple military jet fighters flew west-east at very high altitude (guesstimate FL300) and they were still intrusively audible.
Imagine if the yahoos in small private planes were allowed to buzz around the parks? "Let's go circle General Sherman. Look, it's that one! Not that one, that one. No, that one. I'll go around again. It's that one. That one. No, that's General Grant, it's that one! I'll go around again..."
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The restrictions are there for pretty much the same reason you can't drive your 4x4 SUV where you like in national parks. Because there would always be idiots making a mess, racket and annoyance to ruin the whole point of it being a national park.
Re: Oh, goody (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is idiots flying their toys around forest fires wanting a good view of the flames. Nevermind that the helicopters trying to extinguish said flames can't maneuver around them.
Allow people to fly their drones in parks, but program an override that responds to an emergency reaponse vehicle's beacon to make way.
There's obviously ways that *this* system could also be abused, in theory. I'll let people smarter than I find another solution /happy medium, I guess.
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Even some large commercial airports have only one runway. Europe's busiest airport, Heathrow, has only got two runways. So the amount of runways doesn't necessarily give a proper indication of the size of the airport.
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Plutocracy at its best.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com... [usatoday.com]
""The passengers who fly on airlines and the airlines are paying for projects at airports where we don't fly," [Air Transport] association CEO James May says"
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Last I checked, "restricted airspace" for drones included some hilariously large areas - check out what appears to be the official map [knowbeforeyoufly.org]. Note that includes five miles from airports (why I can't legally fly drones at my own house) and anywhere in a national park.
RC Aircraft have flown safely and legally for years at designated areas where those type of vehicles are allowed to fly. Somebody sticks a couple more rotors on an RC aircraft and now somehow people think they ought to be able to fly them anywhere they want?
Solution seems obvious. (Score:1)
1. Locate GPS antenna.
2. Stab with pointy object.
Does mean you'll have to pilot it though, not rely on automatic following of a flight path.
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Or you could just not be retarded. Just kidding, I know that's not an option.
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4. Drone does not take off.
Even if this is not the current config, it will be once the makers realise this is what people are doing.
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5. (subject to number 4 being worked around) Drone can't find its way home in an emergency.
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1. Locate GPS antenna. 2. Stab with pointy object.
Does mean you'll have to pilot it though, not rely on automatic following of a flight path.
I pilot (non-robotic) quadcopters, not drones, and let me tell you that without a fair bit of practice a "drone pilot" will do little more than crash his expensive plastic without the robotic positioning. I don't think that the current models even come with a proper transmitter for really controlling the flight, a good transmitter costs more than the flight hardware. The GPS is used for more than navigation, for instance I believe that some devices don't have accelerometers and use the GPS to hold altitude,
Re:Solution seems obvious. (Score:4, Informative)
I pilot (non-robotic) quadcopters, not drones, and let me tell you that without a fair bit of practice a "drone pilot" will do little more than crash his expensive plastic without the robotic positioning. I don't think that the current models even come with a proper transmitter for really controlling the flight, a good transmitter costs more than the flight hardware. The GPS is used for more than navigation, for instance I believe that some devices don't have accelerometers and use the GPS to hold altitude, position, and heading.
Well, no. The GPS is used for position and speed, if the manufacturer is competent then that's it. You can't get reliable altitude measurements from it, that's where GPS is weakest and most of these tiny antennas are lucky to pull in four sats. A barometer is used for altitude and at least 3DOF sensors are used for flight control. If you want auto-leveling flight, you need 6DOF. You are going to also need a barometer for altitude, though. You can throw in 3 more degrees with a magnetic sensor, which is enough to get absolute orientation. Where the GPS comes in is in position hold, return to home, or waypoint flying. That's the only place the typical drone uses it at all.
For basic self-leveling flight, the only sensors needed are on a 6DOF sensor board, e.g. MPU6050 or similar. That's one chip. For fully controlled flight with RTH and PH you need 7DOF (6DOF plus magnetic heading), Baro, and GPS. Most fancy-pants drones are going to use 9DOF plus baro and GPS. A 3DOF mag sensor is much better than a basic compass, because it can be used in other orientations than flat.
I'm not an expert, but I've built two drones recently (one quad, one fixed-wing) and forked Multiwii so as to add sd card logging support to it...
The "permanent" restrictions, such as those around Washington, DC (not Washington as mentioned in the poor article) and airports will probably require a way to either flash the storage medium via JTAG or decrypt the traffic. I figure the community will take less than a year before it figures out one or the other, based on how quickly other consumer devices are cracked.
I would be shocked and amazed if they were actually doing anything meaningful to keep users out of the device. Probably the biggest impediment to anyone bothering to hack these drones so far is that it's too easy and cheap to just build your own, or to buy a RTF kit that's made out of parts you could have bought yourself and which has no geofencing. Most of the really cheap drones (e.g. with atmega328-based FCs) don't have the room for geofencing code! And even the ones that do have room don't do it, although I can see it coming in the future. It might even be a fun feature to develop.
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Yes, the fences will be hacked apart. Yes, you can bypass everything. And yes, you can fly in a red zone. At least, on a Phantom, just fly without the GPS. You shouldn't go far but puttering around your back yard will be fine.
What these restrictions WILL do is keep the MAJORITY of brain dead idiots (the 15 year olds that get a Phantom for Christmas) from mindlessly flying their new toy anywhere their multitasking-limited brains think is a good spur-of-the-moment idea. If you have enough brains to bypas
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Enjoy your drones, especially the quad! I'm now looking at the page about it that you wrote on your blog.
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Enjoy your drones, especially the quad! I'm now looking at the page about it that you wrote on your blog.
I'd enjoy them a lot more if I didn't live right next to an airport! I still don't even know where I can reasonably fly. I've only done very low-altitude flights with the quad, and nothing with the fixed-wing yet. Neither model is set up for FPV yet, so there's no temptation to abuse the airspace anyway.
I wonder how hard it would be to hack the sonar sensor from an "electronic tape measure" to work in my plane. The business end of the circuit appears moderately well-isolated.
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A couple of years ago I was given a packet of 'Chinese Lanterns.' Basically incendiary devices: Paper balloons heated by a candle so they float.
The instructions warned not to launch them near woodlands, fields or urban areas. Or near the coast, near airports, near overhead power lines, near military facilities. I'm not sure where you actually could launch them. Not that anyone follows the instructions.
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I'd enjoy them a lot more if I didn't live right next to an airport! I still don't even know where I can reasonably fly.
That's the problem that every city dweller with a telescope has! For the telescope (actually 20x80 binoculars in my case) I try to get out of the city once every few weeks, and occasionally I'll take one of the kids. But don't take kids the first few times that you fly the quad. Those props are really dangerous, go google quadcopter injuries. You might even consider bringing a 1 meter by 1 meter cardboard shield along just in case.
Re:Like RF Limits In Wireless Firmware?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Like RF Limits In Wireless Firmware?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do I sign?
As an old RC pilot, I get fed up with this kind of people, too. Back when I was young (and the snow was THIS high, even in Summer...), there was no geofencing or anything like that. Oddly, we still didn't fly our planes near airports. Or near hazards. Or near populated land. Or anywhere where simple COMMON SENSE told you that it would be at the very least idiotic, to not use a stronger word, to fly your plane (or helicopter, or whatever) there.
Because people knew what consideration was. People THOUGHT before acting. And people most of all knew that actions have consequences.
But somehow that was lost in the past years somehow. Everyone's entitled to do whatever he pleases and as soon as (not if. Not even when) he fucks up, he blames everyone and their dog, the manufacturer of the gadget that got him into trouble and of course legislation for not protecting him from being a total moron.
Fuck them.
Re: Like RF Limits In Wireless Firmware?? (Score:2)
I'd like to add that due to public perception and possible regulation things are getting bad.
Ideally there would be more fields where drones are allowed to fly as interest has increased. I was told that one park no longer allows rc planes. Of course this same park also host paragliders and hang gliders, so I'm not sure what the real reason is.
Its really a shame that communities aren't springing up to encourage safe use in safe areas. At least they aren't where I live.
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It was a long uphill battle for us over here too. Mostly due to hunters fearing that our noisy engines would scare their prey away. At least until we could show footage of a (wild) rabbit sitting and eating only a few feet from a staring RC plane and not giving a shit about the ruckus. They got used to it, noticed that it ain't no threat at all and simply didn't give a shit.
We had to deal with paragliders and we found terms to agree on, we are in contact with the paragliding club that's a few miles away and
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That technology has been available for a few decades.
Yes it has. But there has been a fundamental shift in the accessability of the technology. A majority of this technology has historically been radio transmitters that cost hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars, recievers that cost similar, and models that actually require a solid understanding of aerodynamics to build, trim and fly. Dozens if not hundreds of hours of work to build it. An big investment of time, money, and a dash of pride meant that flyers protected their craft like a their first born. Flying near an airfield would be unspeakable; No way in hell do I want my toy wrecked by errant prop or jet wash! (..I guess it would suck if I brought an actual plane down as well.. I guess).
The only thing different about drones is that they are slow and hence easier seen.
I disagree. Any spanner with a credit card and a desire to see their neighbours tits can go buy a ready to fly FPV drone cheap on eBay, hook it up to their smartphone, and get in the air in a second. No expensive equipment investment, no time invested in the build, no incentive to protect their flyer. THIS is the difference, and it has seen people who would never consider an RC aircraft suddenly snapping them up like the "toys" they are often marketed to be. So now you have a bunch of people who have no knowledge about aerodynamics or aviation generally who suddenly think "wouldn't it be sick to go fly this around an airport for lulz and photos", and suddenly we have the problems we are now seeing. Most fixed and rotary wing hobbyists I know have an inherent respect for their fellow flyers, be they scale or full size pilots. We all share the sky, and we'd rather not kill each other. HISTORICALLY there has been close to zero risk (no such thing as zero risk, where there are humans involved, there is always room for something to fuck up) but now the technology is more accessable to the "pleb public", the risks of serious incident is and will continue to increase. As you have said, there have been next to no incidents historically, but as many have pointed out to you, the fact this story even exists to publish is a demonstration that the danger is indeed increasing. To ignore these factors is about as ignorant as using an absolute term like "zero actual risk" when there is no way for you to know what is and has happened globally in the past.. however many years of RC flying as a hobby.
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Yes, that's certainly a consideration as well. All you say is absolutely correct and the conclusions you draw are sound.
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The quadcopter seems to be fundamentally different from the fixed-wing airplane. Either one costs roughly the same, about $200 for a cheap good one RTF. I recently built SK450 for $120 that you'd normally get a basically identical unit RTF for $200, and drone'd up a normally-$200 foam plane (1st gen e-Flite apprentice, sans SAFE... got acrotrainer now) that I got as part of a $10 lot of crap for much less, around half that. But although a fixed-wing drone is theoretically cheaper than a quad (my quad has 4x
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Back when I was young (and the snow was THIS high, even in Summer...), there was no geofencing or anything like that. Oddly, we still didn't fly our planes near airports. Or near hazards. Or near populated land. Or anywhere where simple COMMON SENSE told you that it would be at the very least idiotic, to not use a stronger word, to fly your plane (or helicopter, or whatever) there.
Oh please. Back when I was young I could carry guns on the plane under the condition they weren't loaded, buy cyanide from pharmacy, and didn't get put on a watch list ever time I bought a bag of fertilizer for the garden.
You must be under the impression that the bad apples are what is causing all your problems rather than a psycho oppressive government dead set on justifying it's own existence by crapping out a certain number of new restrictions per quarter. A few idiot drones are a rounding error for all
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RC planes cost next to nothing today with them being entirely built in China now. You can get a plane, ready to fly, for a fraction of what they costed 20 years ago. Even ignoring inflation. Still, old RC enthusiasts don't suddenly decide it doesn't matter if they fly them just anywhere. I can't think of a single case where someone who is "serious" about this hobby decided it would be a bright idea to start his latest dirt-cheap Chinaplane down main street. And these are people who can actually control the
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Re: Like RF Limits In Wireless Firmware?? (Score:2)
Interestingly WiFi limits 5GHz channels due to use by weather radar commonly used in airport. If you're using WiFi near an airport, you turned off the country restrictions and your router doesn't do DFS correctly then you may be causing more aviation hazards than the drones. Careful which channels you use.
5 mile radius exclude the entire bay area (Score:5, Informative)
If drones are geofenced to stay 5 miles from airports, all of the bay area is excluded. It is about 30 airports in the area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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If there are, indeed, about 30 airports in the Bay Area, there's also a lot of air traffic and the airspace is pretty busy. That makes it less safe for drones to share the airspace with other types of aircraft.
What about the airspace that's non-shared? The space below, in which aircraft aren't permitted to operate? There's no legitimate interest in denying drone use in that space, because airplanes aren't supposed to be there anyway. In practice, they will be there only in an emergency, which means vanishingly rarely. If it doesn't mean that, then those airports should be re-sited someplace they don't constitute a substantial public health risk.
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I'd never give my money to a company that is arming idiots with tools that can interfere with airport operations, drop electrical grids [bbc.com] and god knows what else. People will always whinge about being told th
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Bendix cannot sell aviation radio systems unless they are tested and ticketed by the aviation authority of the country in question. So we legislate the same way for drones. A manufacturer must have X Y Z features (with a good mind to making any measures as unhackable as possible, or more realistically, unhackable to 90% of the population) or it is not allowed to be imported or sold in the countries market, period. Buyers do not assume the risk of being cau
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TFS mentions two companies. One of them is Chinese (DJI).
I doubt the other Chinese companies can beat them so easily.
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And eventually they're going to be flooded out of the market by Chinese manufacturers. There's already plenty of Chinese drones that are cheaper and work just as good as these expensive western made ones.
DJI is a Chinese company, you insensitive clod.
And this is how the world is going to end (Score:2)
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Fencing Private Property? (Score:1)
You know I would kinda hate to be the second (or is it the third) person to shoot one of the drones down.
Additional feature (Score:1)
If you fly too close to the White House, your drone will self-destruct after sending the coordinates of the remote to secret service.
I smell a class action lawsuit (Score:2)
Just spent over a thousand dollars on a device that doesn't work everywhere. This is no different than the authorities saying that we, as search & rescue personnel, can't drive quads or jeeps or land a helicopter in a designated wilderness area. Oh, excuse me, Mr. On-Scene-TV-Reporter, have I got a story for you.
Not new News is it? (Score:1)
Make it bigger! (Score:2)
They should make that restricted area huge! Cover the whole earth except for a little circle around senator feinstein's house. Make them all fly there!