Drones & fireworks

[Roderick]

This week someone sent me this link:

 

and someone else sent me this link:

 

I really don't care about any damage that could potentially be done to a drone used in this manner, what does concern me is that a damaged drone may plummet out of the sky onto spectators.

From a height of say 100 - 150 metres the 1.5kg weight of your average drone would have a serious impact.

 

Have you considered this as a risk?

What can reasonably be done about it?

[Stuart91]

I don't know much about fireworks, but at all the shows I've worked at the bursts are well away from the spectators, otherwise there'd be ash raining down on them. So a drone flying through the "action" is going have a decent amount of separation, whether it will be enough or not is hard to say - I expect it'd be hard to estimate how far a drone could drift as it fell...

[dbuckley]

The obvious authorities reaction is to ban fireworks some more.

[revbobuk]

No - I think that what we need is a regulation requiring drones to be safetied upwards so they can't drop out of the sky. It's crazy that there is no secondary suspension B-)

[kerry davies]

In the EU, drones of over 150Kg are regulated by EU aircraft laws and those under 150Kg by national regulators like the CAA in the UK. There are restrictions on use near "structures" and people; See this article.

The first drone conviction has already happened, See here.

 

They will inevitably become more regulated especially when the first Youtube video gets posted of an identifiable celebrity/Royal/gay-popstar-in-compromising-video and they bring charges of "invasion of privacy". The police are already getting het up over the use of them for "casing the joint" by criminals and illegal surveillance by all sorts of individuals and companies.

 

As usual with innovation the general use of these things is OK until someone abuses them and everyone suffers when the clamp down on abuse has to start. Fireworks strikes me as one of those "Ooh, lovely" cases which appear, at first sight, to be good until the possible ramifications are considered. What happens to radio control when they are in the middle of an airburst? If they are "brought down" by a mortar or rocket will they hit the "organised crowd of over 1,000"? They are not exactly like pyro fall-out in that they can mobilise relatively great distance at relative speed. They won't just "fall down."

 

The problem is never the technology but the humans using it since the average human is either wicked or stupid. Facebook parties, phone hacking, Paypal fraud, terrorist radicalisation, Universal Credit; none of it the fault of the technology but of the human interfaces.

 

Here endeth today's; "It'll all end in tears" old fartery. (Nice one, Revbob.)

[Paul TC]

They won't just "fall down."

 

 

 

But they can be helped :( LAPD lose drone to the public

[Tomo]

They can easily be configured to "just fall down".

 

Tri and quadcopters are inherently unstable, it requires continuous active stabilisation to keep the craft in the air.

They're also terrible aerodynamically - the acrobatics some can do are purely due to high thrust-to-weight.

 

If one prop is destroyed the feedback loop will immediately try to compensate by reducing thrust on opposite prop(s), and if that cannot stabilise it (eg Y-6 or X-8 can fly with one or two props gone) then it is going to fall. The control algorithm will automatically attempt to do a vertical fall.

- So on a heavily-loaded Y6 or X8 loss of one prop results in a controlled vertical descent. It's going down, but it'll do it as slowly as it can.

- In that video clip you'll see that the model aircraft "wobbles" down to the ground as it controls its crash in a very near-vertical descent.

 

Semi-automated controllers are configured so that irrecoverable loss of stability cuts all engines and then it will fall ballistically.

 

The "dumb" controllers all cut engines if the remote control signal is lost.

 

- After all, decking it straight down is obviously safer (as you shouldn't be flying it over people - the model in the hockey clip really is being flown in a stupid place) and even if you don't care about that, you're more likely to recover any surviving parts that way.

 

I've heard of a few people fitting a parachute to release in the event of irrecoverable loss of stability.

Whether that's safer or not depends on the parachute and the flying location of course.

[kerry davies]

Object moving forward at X mph loses control and falls vertically? I think not. My uncle Isaac didn't think so either.

 

It still doesn't answer the loss of radio control, that flight through masses of carbon particles suggests possible, which resulted in the drone buzzing the BAE Systems nuclear site.

 

I agree that I am being a negative sort of paranoid git but they paid me handsomely to be just that in days gone by. If it can go wrong it will is no bad motto to live by. Speculating on what might possibly go wrong is a big part of what this safety forum is all about. Bring it on folks, you guys know more about drones and radio control than I ever will.

[ImagineerTom]

Generally speaking (and I'm sure there are a few cheap units which saved money by not including this software) quadrators etc have a "prime directive" which means in the event of a loss of signal they fly back to a pre-defined GPS position (usually launch location) or to the last-known-good position and attempt to reconnect before engaging in a controlled descent. Likewise they generally have battery monitoring which ensures that they don't simply die in mid-air. Whilst a direct hit or catastrophic failure could cause them to plummet to the ground there's a surprising amount of in-built safety protocol to ensure that they do everything they can to minimise injury or damage to others - there's more computer processing and software controlling these things than the NASA space shuttles :-p

[Shez]

There do unfortunately seem to be increasing incidences of fly-aways of UAVs. Whether that's down to pilot error or software malfunction is still up for debate but precisely how they land once they do disappear over the horizon on their own is a bit of an unknown. I suspect it may not be a very elegant landing.

[Stuart91]

As with so many of these things, the problem won't be with the reputable drone manufacturers, but the bargain priced units on eBay / AliBaba that omit safety features to save money. And of course they're going to be the ones bought by idiots, which means there's more chance that the safety measures would be required…

 

There's a thread somewhere about DMX controlled flame effects - most of the arguments there would transfer quite easily to the drone issue.

[Roderick]

As with so many of these things, the problem won't be with the reputable drone manufacturers, but the bargain priced units on eBay / AliBaba that omit safety features to save money. And of course they're going to be the ones bought by idiots, which means there's more chance that the safety measures would be required…

And there we have the core of the problem.

Responsible people are unlikely to fly their $6K drone through a fireworks display just for kicks. It'll be some knob with a sub-standard clone they bought for less than $1000 of Fleabay.

[slipstream]

My background includes loads of fireworks, by and large the area where a drone is going to get damaged during a display will result it dropping within the safety exclusion area that I have created anyway - we expect debris and wind drift - so unpowered the drones forward momentum is lost almost immediately, at which point it become just another bit of falling crud. I would be more concerned with it spoiling the look of the show particularly if it was led lit as many are. On many sites, it would not be an issue other than visually. That said - your not doing it on my show without PLI and client agreement.

[Stuart91]

That said - your not doing it on my show without PLI and client agreement.

 

Is there any easy way of stopping an idiot with a cheap eBay drone from disrupting a display? I'm amused at the idea of pyro techs having to carry surface-to-air weaponry to disable drones. That'll be a fun risk assessment to write. :** laughs out loud **:

[ImagineerTom]

I'm amused at the idea of pyro techs having to carry surface-to-air weaponry

technically, isn't that what they already carry? http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif