Rise of the Drones

Charles Eide and Mike Danielson have been flying radio controlled aircraft since they little kids growing up in the same neighborhood.

By mounting stabilized cameras onto the bellies of the drone aircraft, Eide and Danielson can offer customers a bird’s-eye view of anything from construction sites, to city attractions, to real estate listings.

“It helps sell houses, which is really in my opinion a huge economic impact in the Twin Cities — helps houses move faster,” Eide said.

Business was booming, until a call came from the Minneapolis office of the Federal Aviation Administration. They were simply told to ground their commercial use of the aircraft. Turns out, current regulations don’t allow unmanned aircraft for commercial purposes.

Business was booming, until a call came from the Minneapolis office of the Federal Aviation Administration. They were simply told to ground their commercial use of the aircraft. Turns out, current regulations don’t allow unmanned aircraft for commercial purposes.

The highlight of this year’s Voestalpine Klangwolke Festival in Linz, Austria, was a choreographed air show with 49 quadcopters equipped with LEDs. Ars Electronica Futurelab and Ascending Technologies GmbH set a world record with the largest swarm of these “quadrocopters” outdoors at the same time.

The highlight of the show was a magically lit swarm of computer-controlled helicopters that symbolized the virtual network and digital communities of our time, and that paraded the opportunities and possibilities associated with these impressively before our eyes. (...)

49 AscTec Hummingbird quadrocopters were used for the world premiere. This aircraft has already proven itself in many task areas. “The AscTec Hummingbirds have outstanding flight attitude and position control, which was an important prerequisite simply because of safety concerns with a performance with thousands of spectators in the middle of the city,” said Daniel Gurdan, one of the four founders of Ascending Technologies.

uasvision.com  September 7, 2012

As technology advances, unmanned aircraft used for surveillance are moving from the battlefield to your backyard, and not everyone is happy with it (with poll)

In Pakistan, since 2004, from under 2,000 at the low end to more than 3,400. The CIA isn't saying. So who's being killed -- terrorists or civilians?

"The data show that only a relatively small number of high-level targets have been killed, something on the order of 50, estimates vary. which is roughly 2 percent of those who have been killed," said James Cavallaro, a law professor at Stanford University. "Which means that 98 percent of those killed have not been high-level targets."

Cavallaro is co-author of a paper critical of U.S. drone use. He and his team went to Pakistan.

"We don't hear enough about the costs, civilians killed, civilians injured, destruction of communities, growth of anti-Americanism, and fomenting recruitment for terrorist groups," he told Teichner. "When all of that is considered, there are serious doubts about whether drones are the best option. (...)

Now, drones are headed off the battlefield. They're already coming your way.

AeroVironment, the California company that sells the military something like 85 percent of its fleet, is marketing them now to public safety agencies.

Steve Gitlin, a vice-president of AeroVironment, demonstrated for Teicher the company's Qube system: "It's a small unmanned aircraft that's designed to give first responders an immediate eye in the sky so they can find lost kids, they can investigate accidents, they can support disaster recovery for earthquakes in California, tornadoes in the Midwest, hurricanes in the Gulf Coast.