Drone Journalism Development: Final Lessons from JournoDrone One

When JournoDrone One met its end last month, taking one final dive into the grass and shattering into foamy bits, it dashed the hopes of DroneJournalism.org developers of an easy solution to drone journalism. However, we were well aware that this enterprise had a learning curve. And we did have some measure of success, and learned some valuable lessons that will help us and other drone journalists in the future.

We can say for certain that the drone flew. It didn’t fly very high – 12 feet or so – or for very long – perhaps 5 seconds at most. But it did fly.

Above is the only on-board footage of the first and only flight of JournoDrone One. For most of the video, the shadow of the drone’s nose is visible in the bottom of the image, except for the last few seconds when the drone lifts off. That’s when the image starts to bob and weave, because there’s no longer wheels and landing gear keeping the craft stable.

Only one minute and eight seconds could be recovered from the GoPro HD camera mounted to the bottom of the craft. That’s because I maneuvered the aircraft with very little altitude, and inadvertently sent it in a downward trajectory. Upon impact, the GoPro separated from its mounting case and ejected its SD card before it had a chance to write the remainder of the flight to the card. This also corrupted the file, and so a freeware program was used to recover what little footage the GoPro managed to record.

What went into the drone, and what did I get out of it? Here’s the details.

Drone Journalism - Cheap Coverage from the Sky for TV News Stations

JournoDrone One outfitted with a small HD camera for aerial videography. The potential for these devices to capture live video from the sky, on the cheap, has generated interest from the television news industry.

Although we’re several years away in terms of regulation and technology for making drones a feasible, low-cost platform for television news, the television news industry has started to talk about using drones to enhance coverage.

Myself, along with Matt Waite of Nebraska’s Drone Journalism lab, were recently interviewed by the television news trade journal TV Technology. It briefly mentions DroneJournalism.org and our (unfortunately now departed) JournoDrone One (pictured above).

Tom Butts, the writer of the piece and the editor in chief of the TV Technology magazine, focuses mainly on drones as a cheap alternative to manned helicopters for live news events. He also draws attention to how ethical or technical mishaps with drone technology could slow or prevent the adoption of drone technology in the TV broadcasting industry.

Here’s some excerpts below:

Drone Journalism: The News Choppers of Tomorrow
By Tom Butts

For TV news crews, operating an “eye in the sky” means hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in aircraft maintenance and fuel costs. Using choppers also comes with inherent risks that have resulted in numerous accidents over the years.

As stations look to save money while reducing safety concerns, some in the news business are beginning to examine the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to obtain highly valuable news coverage from above. While it’s a relatively new concept for journalists, the technology of “drone journalism” is familiar and extremely cost-effective when compared to traditional aircraft.

In essence, drone journalism involves the use of remote-controlled small aircraft outfitted with cameras to acquire footage from the air. What defines “aircraft” could be anything from a toy helicopter purchased at the local mall to more sophisticated devices, and the camera could be a typical point-and-shoot to a more expensive DSLR with video capabilities.

There’s just one problem. The use of such devices is illegal in the United States – for now, at least. Last month, as part of its latest budget, Congress gave the Federal Aviation Administration until 2015 to develop a set of rules and guidelines authorizing the commercial use of such remote-controlled unmanned aerial devices. And several researchers and entrepreneurs are exploring the technical – and perhaps even more important – ethical uses of these drones.

…

JOURNODRONE

Matthew Schroyer, a drone and data journalist at the University of Illinois-Champagne [sic] created dronejournalism.org as a forum to discuss and share ideas about the subject and is developing a UAV dubbed the “JournoDrone,” based on designs from diydrones.com. Schroyer is approaching the subject matter more from a data-gathering standpoint, using still photographs to stitch together maps from aerial surveying.

“We are getting to the point where a journalist can build a drone for himself and fly it and use it to collect all sorts of interesting data and information that you couldn’t get before without this perspective,” Schroyer said. “These platforms are so versatile… I could really see this technology taking off and being adopted in a lot of newsrooms.”

Up until now, must of the public has become aware of drones through news reports about their use in military operations – and then only when something goes wrong. This has created a public relations problem that both [Matt] Waite [a professor of journalism at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln] and Schroyer believe could be compounded if the commercial use of drones is abused, specifically to violate people’s privacy.

“We don’t send photographers to people’s houses with long telephoto lenses and we don’t trespass on someone’s private property to use those lenses to take pictures through people’s windows,” Waite said. “Why would using a drone make that any more OK? It wouldn’t. There are significant questions of people’s rights, the right to assembly and the government’s powers to monitor people that come with this technology.”

…

What happens if the paparazzi start using drone cameras to spy on celebrities? How far would they go? This is one of Schroyer’s main concerns. “The entire field of dorne journalism could be stifled by one incident and then we could lose all this reporting ability,” he said. “We don’t want that to happen.”

You can read the full story at http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/tvt_20120411/index.php#/70

Meantime, I'll be delivering news on the status of JournoDrone One here and on DroneJournalism.org in the near future. That update will have information on our progress, where we're headed in the near future, as well as advice for drone journalists who are trying to develop their own drones.

The Harrisburg tornado, the JournoDrone, and a well-deserved crash

Aerial photograph of Harrisburg, IL. Not taken by JournoDrone One.

Today, the southern Illinois town of Harrisburg is morning six of its own who were killed by a 170 mile per hour, 200 yard tornado. It was one of the 16 tornadoes that ripped through Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky, claiming 13 lives.

Tuesday night, while news networks came from far and wide to cover the devastation on the ground, I worked to prepare JournoDrone One to film the disaster from the sky. For better or worse, the drone never made it to Harrisburg.

JournoDone One is a test mule for DroneJournalism.org, which myself and fellow drone journalism developer Acton Gorton hope will pave the way for a low-cost, highly durable and transportable small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS) for journalists.

JD-01 had never flown a mission before, let alone been tested. So the idea of rushing to Harrisburg and filming anything was a long shot, but something I felt I needed to try. This was a disaster just three and a half hours’ drive from home base, and if I had anything to say about it, I would be putting my equipment to good use. And I do venture to natural disasters on a whim.

Of course, it wouldn’t do any good to drive to the storm-ravaged town of Harrisburg just to nose-dive a drone into the rubble after takeoff. The town had enough grief and did not need some clumsy pilot crashing drones into things and making things worse. So instead, I had a test flight in Champaign, where I dove the drone into a freezing field. Here’s what happened.