At least 5 shows canceled after drones fell from the sky at Orlando holiday event
At least 5 shows canceled after drones fell from the sky at Orlando holiday event
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/kyqWG
At least five drone shows have been canceled, or have paused the use of the systems, after several drones struck a crowd at a holiday show in Orlando on December 21.
Universal Orlando, Orlando World Center Marriott, the cities of Dallas and Austin, Texas, and a New Year’s Eve event in New York City’s Central Park have either canceled drone shows or the drone components of larger holiday events following the incident.
It is unclear which companies were under contract to produce the shows in each location.
Footage captured on December 21shows drones colliding with each other before falling from the sky during a holiday show at Lake Eola Park. Some drones fell into the lake, some onto the ground and some into areas where a crowd was watching.
Among them was a 7-year-old boy who was struck in his chest by one of the drones. He underwent emergency heart surgery, according to a GoFundMe campaign posted by his family, who spent Christmas in the hospital as he recovered. CNN has reached out to his family for an update on his condition.
The videoshowed several red and green drones crashing into one another before hitting the ground, in what the city described as “technical difficulties,” following the incident.
Flying drones over crowds of people is an FAA violation. They were fucking up before the fuckup even happened. The lawsuits should be swift.
What a lot of people need to remember about these things, is that even the mid-sized drones have enough rotor energy to decapitate people.
They're basically blades whorling about at high speed. Worse is if something collides and causes the cheap-ass rotor to break off, that's a flying dagger.
this is not something you can "fix", it's an inherent necessity. the more drones in the sky, the greater the risk something gets overlooked... and they should absolutely not be flying where they can fall into people. if that's happening, walk away, because the pilots are probably over looking other incredibly basic safety protocols too.
And with hundreds of drones up at a time, the amount of time a person has inspecting any one drone is significantly reduced.
Here, at least, flying above people is illegal. Surely the operators in this case will be at least losing their licence, if not facing charges.
Pretty sure the rules with the FAA make that clear. If they have a permit for sUAVs… they’ll probably get that tweeted.
I’m not sure that would stop them. But eh. We can hope.
I saw a video (no gore) about a dude flying an RC Helicopter and ended up decapitated in front of family. Horrific.
I'm wondering if someone in the crowd was interfering with the signal or these were point failures on individual drones
I've only ever seen one drone show, during which a few drones started misbehaving, crashed into each other and then into the lake. So from my sample size of one, drone shows are error prone.
That sounds like a really low-value way of committing terrorism, while simultaneously coordinating across 3 cities. More likely, all drone shows outsource their collision avoidance software to like 2 companies and one decided that they won't waste their money on quality control.
Helicopters have this ability, why don't drones?
Drones are controlled by varying the speed of the motors while helicopters are controlled by varying the pitch of the blades at various points in the rotation. If a motor fails on a drone then it's lost, there is no way of controlling it. The helicopter rotor will spin while falling and the pilot can then mechanically control the pitch of the blades purely mechanically which gives some control.
The change of pitch in the helicopter rotor throughout the rotation can be seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0shLv2_Rtnc
because Quads (and more-numerous rotor systems), don't use a variable pitch rotor, and the rotors are directly connected to the motors. Attitude is controlled during powered flight by spinning up or down specific rotors. To roll starboard, you sped up the port-side rotors and slow down the starboard. Yaw, conversely speeds up the two rotors that are spinning the same way and slows down the other two, creating a torquing moment.
Without power, you have no control, and it will generally turn to fall with least resistance.
This is opposed to helicopters which have a swashplate allowing the rotor's pitch to be changed as it spins around. (you have to sets of controlls, 'cyclic' which alters the pitch over specifc points in its' rotation; and 'collective' which adjusts over all pitch.)
Even from a hover, you can autorotate into a forward glide (and this dramatically increases lift production), and more importantly, can build up energy in the rotor system letting you briefly come to a hover just before you, uh. not-quite-crash.
It should be noted, that the sole reason we're using quads for these systems is because they're cheap. Collective pitch helicopters are more complicated to build, and more expensive to maintain. They're less energy efficient, their control inputs exhibit significantly more lag, and they're even more unstable than helicopters (whose single rotor provides a significant amount of gyroscopic stabilization.)
The only reason unskilled people can fly quads at all (or even modestly skilled people...) is because of the shitloads of flight stabilization routines running on them. If you add the cyclic control you'd need to change that, then they'd be significantly more expensive and complicated.
There is a lot of actual control that goes into an autorotation as well as a lot of variables that have to be taken into account. It's not like a plane where you can glide for a while before hitting the ground. You're going in hot either way. Not sure it would slow a drone down that much even if they could.
Autorotation is for more of a controlled crash than anything. Also I don't think it works without a larger blade, not multiple small ones.
I was thinking the same thing about the blades. I don't think there would be enough upflow of air to spin them fast enough for control.
Why not have one drone with a string of lights hanging off of it? Or small enough drones (under the faa weight limit) that falling drones won't hurt you?
Because the string of lights will whip around in the wash of the propellers and the small drones won't have enough batteries or margin for lights to make it interesting.
Read the title thinking - a few drones fall and suddenly there's nothing on TV.