Monday, December 31, 2012

Canadian International Council and a year-end status report



Earlier this month, the Canadian International Council wrapped up its "Drone Week," which pooled the writings from national policy and technology experts, to help understand how drones could change the air and ground in three different contexts: Kill, Watch, Aid.

Much of this conversation revolved around the proliferation of drones as weapons. As I wrote in my own CIC piece for Opencanada.org, "Drones for Good," given the history of media's relationship with technology, this was only to be expected:

If we’re being dictionary-accurate, though, “drone” merely means an airplane or boat guided remotely. The first drone was invented by Nikola Tesla, who wowed audiences in New York City’s Madison Square Garden with a radio-controlled boat in 1898. His audience, baffled and scared by the demonstration, likely had little or no previous exposure to radio technology. It would be nearly a decade until the first public radio broadcast, a live transmission from the Metropolitan Opera House.

A New York Times reporter asked the question that would dog the technology from that day on: What of the military applications for the tiny electric boat? “You do not see there a wireless torpedo,” Tesla replied, offended by the reporter’s suggestion. “You see there the first of a race of robots, mechanical men who will do the laborious work of the human race.
"
 Combine the public perception of drones with the public perception of the media and journalists, and it's easy to see how drone journalism faces and uphill battle. But, I wrote, limiting domestic drone use would have consequences.

In other news, weather has been particularly miserable for flying drones as of late here in central Illinois.

The cold really isn't the limiting factor here, either. Cold temperatures make it difficult for small gas motors to operate (they rely on glow plugs to ignite the compressed mixture of air and fuel, which requires heat). But lithium polymer batteries are actually fairly resilient to the cold.

The autopilot might be the limiting factor in cold weather, as I'm finding out the ceramic resonator that keeps the autopilot microcontroller in sync can be thrown off by extreme temperatures. However, it's much easier to warm something up than cool something off from an electrical standpoint. Cold isn't fun, but it's not ultimately a deal-breaker.

Wind actually is the biggest problem. It's hard to fly my current fleet of drones in 15mph winds. It's not impossible to fly a drone in that kind of wind, it just requires a bigger drone (an 8 foot wingspan would be nice).

While I'm waiting for the weather to improve, I'm focusing on using drone equipment for other data-gathering applications, and working on drones that I can actually fly indoors. More on that in 2013.

Monday, November 26, 2012

An introduction to small drones - from the AMA

Go back just one or two years in the world of drones, and you'll notice a distinct separation between the price of these small, remotely-guided aircraft. At the top end, you had systems like the Gatewing X100 and the DraganFly X6 which cost $20,000 and up, with some models . These units were generally designed for commercial or government use, and with adequate training, can be flown "out of the box."

But for hobbyists and members of the DIY/Maker movement, similar products could be hacked together from GPS and gyro-equipped microcontrollers, RC electric motors, and RC radio equipment for about $1,000.

This price point has made drones very attractive to "hacktivists," or activists with a great deal of technical ability who use that expertise to further the goals of a political cause. Think Tim Pool and the Occucopter, anti-ACTA protestors in Estonia, N8 protestors in Argentina, or SHARK and its Angel Drone (recently shot down for the fourth time).

The video obtained from these aerial platforms have proved useful in rallying support and attention to political movements. Journalists would do well to take notes from how the hacktivists have deployed drones around the world -- because these methods can be easily transplanted into journalism.

The cost of drones has dropped considerably in recent years, now opening up a nice $2,000 - $15,000 range of drones that don't require much hacking experience at all. But there's just one big problem: regulations. There's currently not a place in the FAA regulations for a viable commercial pursuit of drones, and that includes commercial journalism.

There is, however, a place for government and research institutions to use drones. That place is called a Certificate of Authorization, or COA (pronounced "Koh-ah" in the industry).

But let's say you're not a government institution, and still want to fly a drone. There is still a place for you to fly a drone, albeit as a hobbyist.

The FAA regulation AC 91-57 allows anyone to fly a remote-controlled vehicle, for recreation, so long as the aircraft is not flown above 400 feet AGL (above ground level), or within 3 miles of an airport. You must also give way to full scale airplanes, should they enter your airspace (but that really shouldn't happen, given that the lowest legal limit for an airplane to fly is 500' AGL).

Since you're flying as a hobbyist, you should get to know the Academy of Model Aeronautics. The AMA dates back to 1936, and it's the largest association of its kind in America. Club members have years of experience dealing with nearly the exact same kind of controls, radio equipment and motors that make the majority of the $15,000-and-under drones work.

And as a paid member, you get $2.5 million in liability coverage, should your drone have an unfortunate series of events. Keep in mind that coverage is only valid if you follow AMA guidelines.

The latest issue of Model Aviation, which is AMA's official magazine, has quite a few pages devoted to drones. Apparently quadrotors are the biggest growth area for the entire RC hobby. Hobbyists are especially captivated by the aerial video capability of these drones (seeing a theme here?).

The December issue has a great write-up that's a good introduction into multi-rotor drones meant for hobbyists, but it's great for journalists as well.

An excerpt from the article:

Multicopters come in all shapes and sizes. Although there are configuration differences, they all have the same basic components: pilot command and control, motors, propellers, ESCs, a frame, and a flight control module.

Depending on how advanced you want to be, multicopters may also have video cameras, GPS, compasses, barometers, sonar sensors, and telemetry. Often, many of the sensors and secondary options are built into the flight controller, which also houses the electronic gyros and accelerometers found on most multicopters.
 The article also includes some interesting historical background on the origin of multicopters and similar aircraft. Read "Rise of the multicopter" here.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Activists record 8N protest with drones, continue to take lead on drone coverage


Progress in covering large events with aerial drones, especially protests, has been led almost exclusively by political activists. The most recent effort by activists to use drones document the scale of anti-government demonstrations comes from Argentina, where the “8N” demonstration on Thursday, November 8.

That day, some 30,000 Argentinians protested economic conditions, government corruption and the fear that President Cristina Fernandez will attempt to end her term limit.

According to the group El Cipayo Argentino, the government had closed down the airspace ahead of the protest, and did not allow news helicopters to cover the event. So the group came up with a low-budget workaround: they built their own aerial drone to provide coverage from the sky.

As you can hear from the video, the camera attached to the drone picked up a great deal of propeller and motor noise. The fact that protestors can be heard above the din of the whirring motors speaks volumes.

Al Jazeera has a write up about the protest and the activists behind the drone here.

Friday, November 9, 2012

We need more drones because we’re having more big disasters.


The images of an inundated New York City certainly were eye-catching. But it isn’t until you start parsing the data that you start to really understand how bad things got for the East Coast.

Some of the most startling stats: winds pegged at 90 miles an hour when Sandy made landfall as a tropical storm. It left 185 dead between Jamaica and its terminus in the US. It was the second costliest hurricane in recorded history after Katrina, with $52.4 billion in damages. Five thousand commercial airline flights cancelled. Across 26 states, up to 80 million were affected. Eight and a half million people without power after the storm.

Even 11 days after the storm, with freezing winter temperatures closing in, 428,000 in New York and New Jersey remain without power.

Aon Benfield, an insurance broker that specializes in catastrophe management, crunched the numbers and found something just as remarkable about hurricane/tropical storm Sandy. Well, perhaps not so much about the storm itself, but how it fits into recent weather events and climate change in general.

“Devastating Hurricane Sandy was the eleventh billion-dollar weather-related disaster in the U.S. so far this year, and the most expensive,” wrote Wunderground.com’s Jeff Masters, of Aon Benfield’s latest report. “This puts 2012 in second place for most U.S. billion-dollar weather disasters behind 2011, when NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) counted fourteen such disasters.”

Meanwhile, climate scientists noted that not only did global warming make such a historic slew of storms possible, it also made the sea level rise, thus increasing the damage to coastal areas.

“Sandy threw the ocean at the land, and because of global warming, there were about eight inches more ocean to throw,” wrote Chris Mooney on The Climate Desk. “As the water level increases, the level of damage tends to rise much more steeply than the mere level of water itself.”

When Thailand was flooded in 2011, the government contracted a drone to scout out where flooding had occurred, which helped make decisions about where and when to release flood gates. The contractor flew more than 60 flights over a period of 45 days, and claimed that the data obtained from those flights helped prevent the city of Bangkok from suffering more during that catastrophe.

That same year, back in the states, freelance journalist and storm chaser Aaron Brodie took sweeping shots of the Jersey Shore with his own multicopter before and after Hurricane Irene. He uploaded this footage on YouTube, but amended his post after Sandy:

“Irene was child's play in comparison to Superstorm Sandy. In fact, there was no real damage from Irene,” Brodie wrote.

The public wasn’t able to obtain coverage from drones for Sandy. Some news sites did, however, post before and after photos of New York and New Jersey. These post-sandy aerial photos were obtained by the National Geodetic Survey, with the help of NOAA’s King Air and Twin Otter remote-sensing aircraft. The photos were set side-by-side with historic satellite imagery, allowing users to drag these images to do their own comparisons.


Because of the prohibitive cost of aerial photomapping, these images were gathered by government agencies. But, if FAA regulations allowed it, the job could have easily been done with a $1,000 aerial drone. That puts it within reach of even independent and backpack journalists. Or concerned members of the community.

If the climate models hold true, there’s going to be more “superstorms” like Sandy every year. There will be more billion-dollar disasters, more lives lost, more power outages, and the public will need more information about how those disasters are affecting their communities.

Drones are especially capable of giving quick data on the scope, or extent, of large-scale disasters. Now is the time for journalists to learn and perfect tools like the drone to give the public that information.

Photo at the top of the post is of post-Sandy flooding in Haiti, via the Flikr photostream of United Nations Stabilization Mission In Haiti.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

The case of Chicken v Bomber, and how it might impact drone law



The first thing you should know is if you run afoul (pun very much intended) of the law, I can’t bail you out. If you read the “About the Author” page on MentalMunition.com, you’ll note that I’m not a lawyer. My only legal qualifications are an undergraduate course in media law.

Having said that, I started researching drone law and writing back in March, shortly before the Brookings Institution organized a panel on domestic drones and privacy. The ACLU had just published a report in December 2011 called “Protecting Privacy from Aerial Surveillance: Recommendations for Government Use of Drone Aircraft” that referenced important Supreme Court cases that might play a role in drone law.

Just this week, Alexis Madrigal, the senior editor for the Technology channel at the Atlantic, wrote about two cases that could have some bearing on drone law, Guille v. Swan, and U.S. v. Causby. The latter involved dead chickens.

I’ll be writing about that case here. When we talk about drone laws, we’re talking about a speculative thing. To date, no journalist has been sued for violating rights of privacy with an unmanned aerial system. There is no legal precedent specifically for drones as of yet, although that might change in the near future. As drone technology proliferates, so too does the potential for abuse and for court cases.

But the United States courts are not absent of precedent that would come up in a privacy case involving drones. It’s is important to keep in mind that in many cases drone journalism is a form of aerial photography, albeit an unmanned form of aerial photography. Additionally, cases that consider whether the National Airspace System (NAS) is public or private are highly relevant.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Journalism Drone Development: aerial photo mosiacs, and what's the spatial resolution on this drone, anyway?


Above is an aerial mosaic -- a series of 11 photos taken from a small unmanned aerial vehicle (colloquially known as a drone) that have been stitched together in a mosaiking program.

That program, Microsoft Image Composite Editor, is normally used to stitch together a series of sweeping photos taken from the ground to make a single panoramic image. However, the algorithm used to find and match the edges of a series of sweeping photos of, say, the Grand Canyon, is the same algorithm needed to fit photos together to make a map or similar map-esque image from aerial photos.

So, what kind of drone journalism could you do with this kind of image? Aerial photographers have been able to capture a breathtaking, panoramic view of Moscow protests from drones. These drones offer a perspective that is especially helpful at documenting the scope or extent of protests, political rallies, construction projects, landmarks, geographic features, and natural and man-made disasters.

But what kind of data journalism can you do with these drones? That's to say, what kind of hard data can you obtain from these images to launch investigations? How about proving the existence of or extent of something, such as oil spills, wild fires, droughts, or lax construction codes following a disaster, with actual metrics?

Monday, September 10, 2012

Muck Rack hosts Drone Journalism Q&A

What are the rules on drone use right now? What would you use one for in journalism? What about ethics? Last week, the Muck Rack invited Nebraska Drone Journalism Lab's Matt Waite and DroneJournalism.org's Matthew Schroyer to a Twitter Q&A on drones to help answer those questions and more.

Read more on Muck Rack's site, which documented the fourteenth installment of their #muckedup chat.

Reposted from DroneJournalism.org

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Drone Development In Progress: Aerial Photos and Videos


Despite JournoDrone 2 still being in the shop after its maiden flight, drone development is continuing onward and upward. Above is an aerial photo taken from my latest drone project, which has caused that previous drone to collect dust in the basement.

However, this new drone is superior in at least a couple of ways. One, it's much more stable in flight, thanks to its 68.5" wingspan. Its size also means it can loft a larger payload. The photo above was taken using an 11Mpx GoPro Hero 2, which is small, but has a not insignifcant weight penalty.

JournoDrone 2 was a plastic shell that I wrapped in carbon-fiber and epoxy, which could take a crash on the nose without much harm. This newest drone is made of balsa wood, but it's such a docile aircraft that the need for crash resistance is minimal. All that balsa, some 5 or so pounds of it, is also pretty good at flexing and absorbing a hard landing.



Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Drone Journalism at SXSW, now on the PanelPicker

We almost didn't make it on the list, but at the last minute, several of the DroneJournalism.org developers and myself were able to get on the PanelPicker for SXSW Interactive.

We want to show one of the most important tech conferences in the country what Drone Journalism is all about, with a panel we call "Drones for Journalists: Reporting Evolved." We'll be taking the audience through the basics: what is a drone, how can journalists use them to cover live events and augment investigative journalism, and what's been done to this point. We'll also answer questions about ethics, regulation, and the DIY tech behind this emerging field of journalism.

Here's the description we put on the PanelPicker:

Civilian and commercial drones are coming. As many as 30,000 drones, or unmanned aerial systems (UAS), will be flying in the national airspace within 8 years, by FAA estimates. For the first time, the kind of intelligence once reserved for governments is opening to journalists and the media. This panel brings together an expert in disaster reporting, a data-minded journalist who is developing drones to conduct investigations, and a former war reporter and Discovery Channel documentarian who uses a drone to record landscapes and events from a new perspective, to discuss how this technology is being used today, and how it may be applied in the future
At the speed drone development is coming along, March seems pretty distant in the future. But we've got some pretty interesting things to show, and we anticipate even more impressive things (i.e. some brand new drone-assisted reporting that we have in the works) will happen by presentation time.

We just have one problem. Many of these panels and presentations vying for a spot in this prestigious event had at least a couple more weeks than we had to generate votes (these votes count 30% to the ultimate decision). We are trying to get as many votes as possible to narrow the gap, so we can make it to SXSW and show the public what these drones are all about.

Hopefully we will see you in Austin this March.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Drones are monitoring sea mammals, keeping tabs on oil spills, helping governments prevent floods.


Every year, AUVSI, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International,hosts the biggest conference and trade show for drones in the country (but don't call them drones there; the term is UAS, for Unmanned Aerial Systems, please).

The industry group's last convention was in Las Vegas, and wrapped up earlier this month. A colleague who was there sent me the exhibition catalog. As is the custom nowadays, you could have read all that info online. But the printed version was still worth reading, and served as a snapshot of the "state of the drone."

I've taken four of what I thought were the most interesting talks, and pasted their descriptions here. The list includes researchers and developers using drones to monitor oil spills and the health of marine mammals. In one discussion, a Thai UAV company claims their technology helped the government make decisions that averted a major flood from inundating Bangkok.


Friday, August 17, 2012

Innovations, the future, and the history of drone journalism: Q&A


Recently I was asked by a Brazilian Journalist, Nina Gazire of the art and design magazine seLeCT, about where drone journalism came from, where it exists now, and where it might be going in the future. Below are the answers I sent. A lot of progress with developing the drones has been made since this email, but everything else is still very relevant to the subject of drone journalism.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Get the fire extinguisher! Drone safety, GPS spoofing, and how I learned to stop worrying and love the drone.


There are certain things you expect when you're building drones for photomapping and journalism. First, you expect some setbacks. Perhaps a crash or two, or at least a few broken props. At worst, you expect a drone to take a fatal nosedive into a field and break into a hundred pieces, never to fly again.

There is a learning curve to this stuff. But you don't expect your drone to go haywire and burst into flames while you're working on it.

Last month, I was busy preparing an electric-powered drone in my basement for a maiden flight. With a wingspan of over 5 feet, and weighing a little over 7 pounds, it was the largest drone I've worked on yet, and it had a decent-sized power source to match.

Much larger drones have flown on the same basic technology, with power sources of twice the capacity used here. Most of our development to this point has focused on battery-powered drones instead of methanol-powered drones, because we want to keep the risk of fire down (even though fuel fires are rare). But that doesn't meant that batteries can't catch fire.

For my drones, I use lithium polymer batteries, or "LiPo," and they're pretty advanced as far as battery technology goes. They run today's electric cars -- the Leafs, the Teslas, the Fiskers and Volts. If you are reading this on a smartphone, you can thank a lithium battery.

Most other cells are contained in cylinders, but lithium polymer cells come in individual pouches. LiPo batteries are packs of lithium polymer cells that have been bound and tightly wrapped together. What really sets LiPo batteries apart, however, is the amount of energy they can store.

Whenever you're storing a great deal of energy in a compact space, and you suddenly release all that energy, you're liable to create tremendous heat. Since LiPos hold a lot of energy, under the right conditions, they can also catch fire.

According to the instructions of the original balsa plane I was hacking into an autonomous drone, the motor and its speed controller required 5 LiPo cells. I did not have a five-cell LiPo pack. I did have two 3-cell packs, and one 4-cell pack (which is quite large). Thanks to fuzzy math, I somehow thought it was safe to use the 4-cell pack and a 3-cell pack, for a total of 7 cells.

Everything seemed OK at first. The motor whirred happily during testing. Then I took the drone back to the basement to finish mounting and calibrating the autopilot, and things got weird.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Drone Journalism: News that Flies


The idea of using homebrew drones for independent journalism is picking up steam globally.

I just got a digital copy of a story from Aug-Sept issue of seLecT, the Brazilian art & design magazine, which features a story about that same topic. In it, writer and art professor Nina Gazire interviews the Occucopter developer Tim Pool, Nebraska Drone Journalism Lab professor Matt Waite, and myself.

As one would expect, the story is in Portuguese, so here it is translated (via Google):

AT THE END OF 2011, A JOURNALIST OF 25 YEARS HAS BECOME THE SPOKESMAN OF ONE OF THE MORE RECENT EVENTS DISSATISFACTION WITH THE WORLD ECONOMIC CRISIS.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Maker of the AR Drone invests in GIS. Is cheap, commerical drone mapping on the way?


Many people's first introduction to commercial drones may have been the AR Drone by Parrot. Originally marketed as a futuristic RC toy you control via WiFi with an augmented reality iPhone AP, the AR Drone is a consumer-grade, $300 quadrotor with an HD Camera, the first of its kind that has been mass produced.

Parrot, the company that develops and manufactures the drone, have sold 300,000 ARs since 2010 (to put the number in perspective, the FAA estimates 1/10 that number of commercial drones will by flying in the national airspace alongside manned aircraft by 2020). It's also developed a user base that is constantly tweaking the drone and figuring out new uses.

Videographers have rigged the AR Drone with higher-end cameras and found ways to extend its range. Occupy activists have tried to hack them to broadcast live video of protests. They've also been tested as potential platforms to conduct drone journalism at The University of Nebraska's Drone Journalism Lab.

Yesterday, Pix4D, a company that specializes in making software that converts aerial shots from drones into 3D photomaps, announced that it would be receiving a $2.4 million investment from Parrot.

"With the fast technological advances in miniaturized autopilots and digital cameras, lightweight autonomous flying platforms are increasingly used to generate up-to-date and detailed environmental maps and geographical information data," Pix4D said in a press release. "Furthermore, recent changes to the regulatory framework for civilian drones will drive UAV adoption and help address the soaring demand for GIS data."

Christoph Strecha, CEO of Pix4D appeared in a recent video along with Jean-Christophe Zufferey, CEO of senseFly, who also received funding from Parrot. SenseFly produces the "Swinglet Cam," a micro drone system designed for photomapping missions.

In the video, Strecha said it would be "interesting" for his company to step into "To produce games, to produce augmented reality that can be done with quadrotors for the consumer market."

The investment from Parrot, who made quadrotors accessible to average consumer, begs the question as to whether the consumer electronics manufacturer will attempt to do with GIS photomapping what it did to commercial drones. Could a $300 drone mapping system be far off? Would journalists adopt such a device for their reporting? How about city planners, environmental researchers, and construction companies -- would they adopt it as well?

Pix4D hasn't responded yet to questions, but I will update if they do.

Joint video announcement by Pix4D and senseFly

A drone-generated photomap of Port Au Prince, Haiti, generated by Pix4D software.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

A Code of Ethics for Drone Journalists



Yesterday my colleague, Acton Gorton, sent me an email that the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), an industry group representing defense, civil and commercial drone developers and operators, had released a “code of conduct” for the unmanned aircraft systems industry.

“This code is intended to provide our members, and those who design, test, and operate UAS for public and civil use, a set of guidelines and recommendations for safe, non‐intrusive operations,” the code reads. “Acceptance and adherence to this code will contribute to safety and professionalism and will accelerate public confidence in these systems.”

The code is broken into three sections, relating to “safety,” “professionalism,” and “respect.” The code is good as a framework for further discussion, but it’s not terribly specific as-is. For example, the safety portion of the code requires “crew fitness for flight operations,” but mentions no standards by which crew fitness should be judged. Likewise, it requires “Reliability, performance, and airworthiness to established standards,” but does not specify what those standards might be.

The AUVSI also is not the first to develop a code for UAS operations. That first likely belongs to RCAPA, the Remote Control Aerial Photography Association. The RCAPA has an extensive list of guidelines that cover drone construction, flight operations (including checks for control systems, and operations before, during and after flight), and even maintenance logs.

AUVSI likely is keeping broad definitions because it is trying to cover large swaths of the drone industry, which encompasses a wide variety of devices and goals, whereas RCAPA is mostly aiming to represent individual professionals and hobbyists who use drones specifically for aerial photography. But both are similar in that they are trying to safeguard the people who develop and operate drones.

When I launched DroneJournalism.org in December, 2011, I had a purpose in mind: to become a hub for developing the ethical, educational and technological framework for the emerging field of drone journalism. Hoping to become the “Wiki of Drone Journalism,” I opened much of the website to professional colleagues who have an interest in the field. Registration is still opened to interested parties.

Since launching the site, my co-developer and I have built two fixed-wing drones, destroyed one of them in testing, and are cobbling together a multi-rotor journalism drone. But we’ve added very little to the site in terms of drone journalism ethics, and I hope to change that.

Some of the following is from previous posts on DroneJournalism.org, and those form the basis of a code for drone journalists I am proposing. The most recent additions to the code involves a tiered approach to drone journalism ethics that borrows from the philosophy of Maslow’s pyramid.

A CODE FOR DRONE JOURNALISTS

Monday, June 4, 2012

After months of development and heartache, the journalism drone takes flight


Months of planning, training, re-design, and fabrication finally paid off for DroneJournalism.org developers, as we successfully launched a journalism drone for the first time on Sunday, June 3, in the small Illinois town of Tuscola.

Eventually the drone will be equipped with an Arduino-based autopilot (APM 2.0) and cameras to collect aerial photography and aerial photomaps for use in journalism investigations. JournoDrone 2 is the successor to JournoDrone One, which was meant to be a "Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS) for journalists that is powerful, durable, transportable, affordable, upgradeable and supported by a community of experts."

JournoDrone One was smashed to pieces during testing in two months ago. Since then, I had been applying the lessons learned from the first drone to make a drone for journalism that was stronger and more capable.



The June 3 flight was a basic shakedown of the airframe, without autopilot or sensors, to prove the airworthiness of the drone. While the airframe proved slightly heavy and unpredictable at times, our indication is with some modification it will be a competent flyer for our purposes.

JournoDrone 2 is based on the "FPV Raptor" radio controlled airplane with some important modifications, the most important of which is carbon fiber-reinforced fuselage. The airplane had a fairly good track record as a First Person Video drone, so we didn't feel that we needed to change the layout of the craft. Yet we needed to have an extra layer of security to make it more of a "tool" rather than "toy."

While we had some initial concerns about weight gain, the two layers of carbon fiber and epoxy proved its worth when the aircraft experienced a sudden gust of wind in its second flight and crashed. While the impact separated the motor pod, chipped the propeller, bent the motor shaft, and cracked the casing of an on-board camera, the fuselage was totally unscathed. We were not able to recover the on-board video of that second flight.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

JournoDrone 2: Learning from the past, Looking to the future


JournoDrone One had an important mission: to be a drone journalism platfom that was "powerful, durable, transportable, affordable, upgradeable and supported by a community of experts." It became a pile of foam instead.

But that's OK. Drone development, especially at this state of technology, is a matter of trial-and-error. That's why myself and fellow DroneJournalism.org developer Acton Gorton are giving it another shot. We are taking all of the experience, knowledge, and goals from the JournoDrone One project and starting again with JournoDrone 2.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Big FAA announcement means quicker access to drones for law enforcement, "streamlined" authorization


Law enforcement agencies will be able to get drones off the ground more quickly, and also will be able to use larger drones, the Federal Aviation Administration announced yesterday.

A news release from the FAA yesterday said that those agencies will be able to enter into a two-step path to authorization, and thus speeding up the process for law enforcement to deploy drones.

"Initially, law enforcement organizations will receive a COA (Certificate of Authorization) for training and performance evaluation," the FAA said. "When the organization has shown proficiency in flying its UAS (Unmanned Aerial System), it will receive an operational COA."

A COA provides the agency with the authorization to fly drones in the national airspace. Currently it's the only way that a government agency can legally fly a drone, which the FAA calls a UAS, and the application process isn't open to commercial industry or private individuals.

The announcement doesn't specify what the requirements are for a law enforcement agency to show proficiency, and doesn't detail the differences between the two types of authorizations. But it does indicate that the FAA is following up on its federal obligation to expedite drone authorizatio

Monday, May 14, 2012

Flight of the JournoBalloon: An intro to balloon photography. Also, I lose the first JournoBalloon.


We almost had it. After months of research, development and heartache, DroneJournalism.org was about to have its very first aerial photographs. And while it wasn't going to be from a drone, these photos would be gathered easily and available instantly.

The balloon went up, the line went out, but something didn't seem right. And then... well, in short, on Wednesday, May 2, at approximately 4:00 p.m., we almost had it. What was it, exactly?

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Partnerships unlock the real potential of drones, especially in drone journalism.

Yesterday, Salon ran a piece on the proliferation of drones at research universities. As Jefferson Morley wrote, universities are at the are at the forefront of developing the unmanned aerial systems that will be monitoring crops, assessing damage, and doing a number of other tasks at home.

That may not come as much of a surprise to anyone who's been following drones in the past couple of weeks. Recently, Electronic Frontier Foundation published the list of public institutions and government agencies who had current or expired authorization to fly drones.

Some applicants were obscure. Herrington, Kansas -- a town of 2,526 souls -- applied for authorization to fly drones. But 25 of the 62 agencies were institutes of higher learning, and many were surprised at how few agencies had applied for authorization.

However, there's a buried lede in this story: universities aren't just developing drones, they're developing these drones in partnerships with other entities. This isn't happening in an ivory-tower vacuum.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Drone stalkers, privacy, ethics and the future: A Drone Journalism Q&A

One of the MAV (Micro Aerial Vehicle) test platform that DroneJournalism.org developers are working with.


Recently, a journalism student from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth emailed me some questions about drone journalism. She was doing research as part of an ethics and law class, and was wanting to know what I believe the future holds for drone journalism and the potential ethical conflicts that might arise from using that technology.

Given the interest many others have had about domestic drones, I thought it would be useful to make that Q&A public. She agreed, and so I've decided to post it here.

Do you think there needs to be an specific mention of drone use in journalists' codes of ethics? Would the guidelines differ from the ethical guidelines for a photographer using a handheld camera?

While existing codes of ethics have proven helpful, blind spots come up when we introduce disruptive technology, or have a communication revolution. I think drone journalism is one of those innovations that forces journalists to take stock of their traditional ethical responsibilities and make some revisions or additions.

We’re trying to establish what those new ethical responsibilities are at DroneJournalism.org and the Professional Society of Drone Journalists. The most frequent ethical concern I hear about involves privacy. Can you ethically allow a drone to film a private person on private property? (Generally, no, you cannot) But there’s more to these drones than just that.

For example, the force needed to keep camera gear, radios and batteries aloft is not insignificant. The rigs we are experimenting with could easily injure a person. If a quadcopter is hovering above someone’s head at 300 feet and suddenly loses power, the results could be disastrous. So a big part of our ethics code is safety. Am I capable of controlling it? Is it safe to operate under these conditions? Am I prepared to take action when something goes wrong? The ethics of safety will trump the value of the story every time.

Something else to consider is that drone technology right now is not as advanced as some would fear it to be. Most multi-rotor craft (helicopters, quadcopters, hexacopters) can only stay aloft for 15 minutes or so. Fixed-wing craft (airplanes) can fly for much longer periods of time, but they can’t be deployed easily or legally yet. And the weather has to be just right. At this stage, a malcontent with a telephoto lens can do more damage than the drones we’re developing. Still, even at this stage, intrusion of private spaces is possible and needs to be discouraged.

Here in Champaign, for instance, we had a story about someone following people at night in a park with what we think was a drone. Pretty scary stuff. This person wasn’t being a journalist, but the event made me realize that these things can really terrorize people if they’re not used properly. It’s not just the footage or data we’re collecting that we need to think about, but how we’re disrupting public spaces with objects that spin at a high rate of speed.

Getting back to the point, a drone journalist really needs to have the classic set of photojournalism ethics (don’t stage shots, don’t alter photos, don’t pay for coverage, be accurate, and all of the other points of the NPPA code), plus additional guidelines that encompass safety and the preservation of private spaces. Because the risk of intrusion of privacy is greater with this technology than any previous, a drone journalist must “amp-up” their ethical considerations.


In the media law and ethics class that I'm taking, I've learned that citizens don't usually enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy in public, but could you see drone use in public spaces raising concerns with the general public, especially because they are less likely to know they are being photographed/observed (depending on the size of the drone, it could be much easier to spot someone standing on the corner with a camera)?
Very good question. Absolutely, people act differently when they know they’re being photographed. A person might chose to walk the other way when they see a journalist with a camera, whereas with a drone, they’d continue on unaware of the situation.

But I also think there’s something to be said for reporting on things as they actually happen, and not the way things happen when a journalist arrives on the scene. So I don’t categorically think it’s wrong to record people from a drone in a public area, even if those people think they’re not being watched. I think what you do with the footage or information is far more important.

If your story is on how private people behave in a public park (littering, smoking, indecent or illegal activity, what have you), you should try everything possible to withhold personally identifiable information. This becomes more important when you’re recording illegal activity, or events where you anticipate a strong public reaction.


What ethical standards would your propose for journalists using drones near or around private property? Would it ever be okay to capture photos or videos of what's happening on someone's private property? An example that immediately comes to mind is a political rally or fundraiser on someone's ranch.
The Supreme Court ruled it’s legal to take photos above private property (SCOTUS views the national airspace as a public space, and anything you view from that public can’t be offered the legal expectation of privacy – see California v. Ciraolo, Dow Chemical v. United States and Florida v. Riley). However, I think we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard. I’m not saying that journalists should never photograph the private property or private persons. Some investigations might be of critical importance to the public, and drones might be the only way to uncover the story. But those should be considered on a case-by-case basis, and never for sensationalism. The litmus test must be: does the public benefit outweigh the invasion of privacy? And could we get this information any other way?

For your example, I would have to consider the people at the rally. Presidents, senators, representatives, governors, mayors, and city council members are considered public figures, so they have different expectations of privacy. However, if the ranch is owned by a private person, that’s their private property, and so ethics might dictate you keep some kind of distance. But what if this person was highly influential, someone who’s being investigated for criminal activity, and a journalist wants to know who his closest political allies are – I think a journalist would be operating in the clear if they were to maintain a high enough altitude (200 or 300 feet, and perhaps not flying directly above the property). I don’t think there would be any case where it would be ethical, not to mention legal, to fly a drone at a low altitude over private property.


Are there any new ethical quandaries journalists might face once they start using drones that they may never have had to deal with before?
Yes, absolutely. There was an interesting panel recently at the Brookings Institute about the impact of drones on privacy, where Catherine Crump, an attorney with the ACLU, made the comment that it’s rare that we have a chance to talk about the potential problems of technology before we adopt it. I think that’s a good thing that we’re having this conversation now, because I think the quandaries will only increase as the technology becomes more capable. Right now, the discussion about ethics is centered on the expectations of privacy and do we or do we not let our journalism drones cross those boundaries. What if a drone spies on a private citizen who is sunbathing in a back yard somewhere? What if it crosses over someone’s property? Those are the questions at the moment.

But the discussion is based on the capabilities of drones in the near future and not on drones 10 years from now. A decade into the future, drones are going to have more advanced sensing capabilities, more freedom of movement, and will have more advanced artificial intelligence. As their capabilities increase, so too will the complexity and the importance of tasks we assign them. We won’t really know to what extent these robots will be capable until they become adopted, so we will invent new jobs for them as we go along. So I can’t really hazard a guess at what we’ll be concerned about in the future, except to say that the current discussion will be resolved by then, and a new discussion will take place.


What do you think the most common news room use for drones in the near future?
Unfortunately, there’s a difference between what I think most news rooms (that have access to drones), and what I would hope news rooms would do with drones.

The way I see it playing out in news rooms, at least initially, is a wiz-bang fascination with technology that stops short of pushing the boundaries. Initial adoption might mean simple television newscasts that could be accomplished outdoors with a tripod are suddenly now “dronecasts.” The news producers might think it a great idea to film the segment from a drone from the sky. It might be visually impressive, but it lacks any sort of substance, and smacks of sensationalism.

I’ll explain why I believe that. Here in Champaign, there’s a local television news station that has failed to make good use of a similarly disruptive technology – online social media. But instead of really understanding the technology and using it to set up, for example, virtual town halls in Twitter, or increasing community outreach, or to source stories, they’ve used it to splash random, unmoderated, comments from random members of the community. These comments never add any substance to the story and they don’t do anything to advance public understanding through journalism. They’re simply a gimmick to hike viewership.

Now, that’s only one station, but you’ll find a similar attitude at most stations. Most television news stations happen are in small markets, and have small budgets, and do not generally chose to invest in the time or expertise it takes to make use of this disruptive technology. That said, I would expect these networks to improve their coverage in some regards. I imagine they would use drones to film local man-made and natural disasters, and certain newsworthy events that could best be covered live and from an aerial vantage point (car chases and crashes, construction projects, shootings, protests). To put it another way, think of all the things that mid-sized and large-market television news stations do with news helicopters, and now give those privileges to even small-market stations.

Of course, that’s just television news. Newspapers and websites probably would use drones more for data collection than aerial footage. In other words, think of all the things that researchers do with these drones (tracking pollution on a beachfront, calculating the oil flow from a damaged rig in the Gulf, mapping land development, conducting environmental surveys), but apply those methods to journalistic investigations.

I see the most hope where journalists can collaborate with scientists in multiple disciplines, conduct investigations using drones, and then package the findings in a digital format that the general public can easily digest. That is, so long as there’s funding, foresight and the will to do those types of projects.

Monday, April 23, 2012

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.

Friday, April 13, 2012

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.

Friday, March 2, 2012

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.



Saturday, February 25, 2012

A word about regulation, applications of drone journalism

This week, I had the pleasure of talking about drones and drone journalism with Drone Journalism Lab founder Matt Waite, and the Joseph Paiva, the Chief Operating Officer of drone developer Gatewing, on Washington DC's "The Kojo Nnamdi Show." A lot of ground was covered in that hour-long show, but I wanted to re-cap and expand on a few of the things I said during the show.

- REGULATIONS

For some time, there has been  and continues to be frustration in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules on small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS). To review the terminology, we refer to a "drone" as the object that is flying in the air. A UAS implies there is more to this than simply the drone; it's a system of technology with a ground-based operator. On the show, I presented the question about FAA UAS regulation, and that was "what is recreational?":

"I mean, that's one of the rules that says that you can fly under 400 feet away from built-up areas, away from airports, but it's not so clear as what recreation really is. Is that what a nonprofit is when they're trying to collect drone journalism? Is that what a organization who is trying to advocate for animals -- Is that what they're doing when they're flying a drone over a pigeon shoot in South Carolina? And so it is kind of debatable, and it's not really codified into any regulation at this point. "

I'll explain. The FAA regulations as they are today provide a space for recreational drones to operate without special certification, and requires special certification for civilian commercial drones. Those UAS must operate under 400 feet and away from built-up areas and airports.

But where do nonprofit, advocacy, and education lie on that recreational-commercial spectrum? Nowhere does the FAA provide a deffinition for recreation. Some university researchers have been told they need a COA (Certificate of Authorization) to operate their experimental drones for educational purposes, which often times take months to process. Additionally, the FAA will not grant any certificate to anyone operating a drone for profit.

After the show, I received a call from a reporter for a broadcast industry magazine, and I told him that it had been five years since the FAA regulations, and I didn't expect any regulations until the 2015 deadline. He sounded shocked, and asked for clarification.

Five years ago, on February 13, 2007, FAA issued a decree, or "Notice of Policy," in the (Docket No. FAA–2006–25714; Notice No. 07–01) which essentially shut down all civil operation of drones (other than recreational/model activity) in the United States.

That Notice of Policy for Unmanned Aircraft Systems said that in order to pilot a drone for anything but a recreational purpose, you need to obtain an airworthiness certificate in an experimental category for your UAS. This certification just the same as any other experimental aircraft, and is required regardless if you were going to fly your UAS under the exact same restrictions as recreational UAS: fly under 400 feet and away from "built-up areas." Even with this certification, you cannot fly the drone for commercial purposes (which would include commercial media).

More than a year later on April 10, 2008, the FAA issued another decree. This established a small UAS Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) to "conduct a formal safety analysis of small UAS, and then promulgate federal regulations for their design, operation and registration." What came out of that ARC? I don't know.

Patrick Egan, from Remote Control Aerial Photography Association (RCAPA), was on that committee and said there was a "lack of comprehensive action." According to RCAPA president Rick Connolly, who Egan interviewed for sUASnews.com, "Even the members that were part of the process feel nothing came of it and all their hard work was put in the circular file."

Then, in June, a new ARC (ARC 2.0) was created. sUAS News had to file a FOIA request to find out who was on the rulemaking committee and what its charter was. This time around, the ARC seems to be dominated by those. Of the 22 committee members who are not from the FAA, 11 are defense contractors, and there is only one who potentially represents the non-defense commercial drone industry. This has generated a level of skepticism and criticism from RCAPA and other commercial and recreational drone groups.

Some news reports said that proposed rules would come out of ARC 2.0 by December 2011. That never happened.

More than a year ago, the FAA grounded the multicopters of the media company MI6 Films, and told the news website The Daily that it could not longer use drones for its reporting. Meanwhile, ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, is now flying its own news drone, and MI6 has since found work in other countries. Australia had rules governing UAVs on the books since 2002. The inability to create a space for commercial drones is hampering not just journalism, but innovation that could spark economic growth in a time of economic stagnation.

As I said on the radio show, the FAA has a tremendous burden on its shoulders. It has to make the national airspace safe, and it has to protect people on the ground from harm. That responsibility should not be taken lightly. However, that does not make the delays any less frustrating. And it does not make any less confusing the fact that you need special certification for a craft used for commercial or educational purposes, while the exact same craft can be operated for recreational purposes without any authorization whatsoever from the FAA. Inconsistency in regulations provide ample opportunity to misinterpret the rules.

- APPLICATIONS


I mentioned on the show that a fixed-wing drone could potentially stay aloft for thirty minutes, up to four hours, and beyond. While it's true that a fixed-wing craft can stay aloft for longer periods than a multicopter, the multicopter is better at fulfilling other roles.

Multicopters are uniquely gifted with the ability to hover in a fixed position for the entire duration of its flight. They are also better at negotiating obstacles and maneuvering in tight spaces, as they do not require forward momentum to provide them with lift. Relative to their overall size, multicopters are also able to lift a heavier load than their fixed-wing counterparts. They really are the ideal platforms for many aerial photography and filming applications.

Balloons are another platform for aerial photography. They trump fixed-wing and multirotor craft for "loitering time," the amount of time the craft can stay above a desired target. Being a tethered aircraft, they are also less stringently regulated here in the United States, meaning currently you can use them legally in more circumstances than you would a multicopter or fixed-wing drone. They do have one shortfall, however, and that is they aren't nearly as mobile or controllable as their counterparts. They drift with the air current, and are only as mobile as the operator is able to re-locate the tether.

Dronejournalism.org is pursuing multicopters, but our most complete project at the moment is a fixed-wing drone. That's because the fixed-wing drone is perfect for being able to photomap swaths of land. And with the proper equipment, they can aim a camera in such a way that it lessens the negative effects of circling above a target. In other words, the camera can pan, tilt, and zoom so that the direction the drone is heading at the time is nearly arbitrary.

Recently, we started the motor on that drone for the first time. Weather has hampered our flying the drone for the time being. I'll leave you with video of that moment. It's filmed from the same camera (a GoPro2) that we'll be mounting to to the drone in the future.


Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Project JournoDrone: A fixed-wing drone system for journalism

From Dronejounrnalism.org:

JournoDrone One

Developers at DroneJournalism.org are launching a project to build a low-cost aerial photo platform for journalists, using a combination of off-the-shelf radio-control components and open source electronics. Their goal is to develop a small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS) for journalists that is powerful, durable, transportable, affordable, upgradeable and supported by a community of experts.

Now one month into the project, development on “JournoDrone One,” or JD-1, is approximately 20 percent complete. DroneJournalism.org is working to secure funding to complete the project by the summer of 2012. The knowledge gained from making and using the drone for aerial photography will allow DroneJournalism.org to bring a similar system to journalists worldwide.

Leading the project is Matthew Schroyer, the founder of DroneJournalism.org, who holds a master’s in journalism from the University of Illinois. Mr. Schroyer has a background in engineering, experience with small, radio-control devices, and experience in using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for data journalism purposes.

“We hope this is the first of many drones that DroneJournalism.org will develop,” he said. “It’s a practical exercise of existing off-the-shelf drone technology, and our first step into a frontier that could greatly expand public knowledge.”

Friday, February 17, 2012

Update on hunters shooting down activist drone: on-board footage, lawsuits and more


Yesterday I wrote that animal rights activists in Ehrhardt, S.C. who had been attempting to film a hunting event had their drone shot out of the sky. 

Michael Kobliska, an
activist associated with SHARK (SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness), said that the group had been operating its drone for about 18 months before their drone went down near the Broxton Bridge Plantation.

The drone, Mikrokopter Oktokopter, suffered damage to wiring to one of its motors, which caused an electrical fault. This forced the Mikrokopter into a semi-controlled fall, in which it sustained further damage.


In an email, Kobliska said his group was preparing to launch the drone when a sheriff's deputy arrived and threatened to arrest the activists.


"
He couldn't quote any statutes, but said we would be violating FAA rules and anyone from our group in the area when the machine flew would be detained until the FAA arrived and presumably took us into their custody. We took this as just nonsensical intimidation and decided to fly anyways."

The SHARK activists then proceeded to test-fly their drone. After everything on the drone seemed to be in working order, they took the drone up again for another flight. From Kobliska:


"
It was a very short flight. The shooters had hidden themselves in the woods and as soon as the machine was up to about 150' they started shooting. It should be noted they were shooting over a roadway, illegal in SC. As we observed later, the machine took a shot to some of the wiring for one of the motors. This caused the machine to lose some thrust, but we could still control it. Since the machine was basically overhead it came back down to where it launched from. It had a hard landing and bent the gear up a bit."

Kobliska said it wasn't the first time their Mikrocopter was shot down.

 
"About 13 months ago we had another drone shot down in Pennsylvania at another pigeon shoot - that machine is still residing in a tree and is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit. We've also been shot at on other occasions."


Activists posted on-board footage of that incident on Youtube as well, in which activists said that the property owner was told by local law enforcement officials to return the drone. In that video, the activists said the drone cost about $8,000.


Here's footage of the Broxton Bridge Plantation incident, both on-board and from the ground. Beginning at the 2-minute mark, five pops can be heard in the audio, presumably from small-arms fire. One of the microkopter's rotors appears to slow and then stop functioning, at which point the drone enters a semi-controlled descent and impacts the ground.




SHARK activists reported the incident to the Colleton County Sheriff's Office, who filed an incident report for malicious damage to property. A copy of that incident report, provided by Kobliska, is available here. From the incident report:


"The total damage in cost to the craft is around two to three hundred dollars. At the time of the report the plantation gates was closed and locked. I was unable to speak to anyone located at the plantation."

Google Earth view of the approximate site of the Broxton Bridge Plantation, which covers nearly 7,000 acres of hunting grounds.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Activists use drone to film pigeon hunting, hunters shoot down drone


Much of the cutting-edge development with small drones is not being done by the media or journalists, but rather activists who use the technology to bring awareness to their cause.

Protesters associated with the Occupy movement hacked small, off-the-shelf RC drones to bring a global audience to the front lines of their protests. Anti-whaling activists now use drones to monitor the movement and activity of whaling vessels.

The animal rights group SHARK -- that's SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness -- is one of the newest activist groups to use drone technology.

It's also the first activist group to have the dubious distinction of having a drone shot down in mid-flight.

The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg, S.C., reported yesterday that while trying to cover a pigeon shoot from the sky, hunters took exception to the SHARK drone and pelted it with birdshot.

 According to a press release from the activists, law enforcement officers and an attorney attempted to convince SHARK not to launch the drone. When the animal rights group launched the drone, shots were fired.

"Seconds after it hit the air, numerous shots rang out," Steve Hindi, president of SHARK, said a press release. "As an act of revenge for us shutting down the pigeon slaughter, they had shot down our copter."

In the press release, Hindi said the shooters fled the scene riding "small motorized vehicles."

The local sheriff's office filed a malicious damage to property incident report, according to the T&D. Hindi wrote that damage to the drone was between $200 to $300.

The SHARK press release said the group would try to film pigeon shooting again next year.

[Edit 2/15  @ 6:30 p.m.: Changed "buckshot" to "birdshot." The latter is the ammunition typically used to shoot birds for sport. The former refers to ammunition used to hunt deer.]

Monday, February 13, 2012

Drone journalism over anti-ACTA protests in Estonia


More drone journalism of protests, using hexacopters. These images were captured over a protest against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement on Saturday, Feb. 11, in Tartu, Estonia.

According to a post by the hexacopter pilot on DIYDrones.com, these images were streamed directly to the web from the 'copter.

It was cold in Estonia that day; -15 Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit). But apparently not too cold for organizers to get protestors "jumping for the camera."

A word on safety, from the pilot Jaan Kronberg:

"Yes I know, it wasn't safest thing in the world to do. Yes I know, many will consider it dangerous and irresponsible. But sometimes you just disregard rules and do something insane.. I wasn't "over the heads" for too long, most of the time behind the stage (you can see it on last screenshot), but ... - yes, I know... But it was special day and I took that risk, that's the only excuse."