February 2012
9 posts
ABC News Australia: Drone journalism takes off →
Particularly interesting to me in this story is the description of the feeling of knowing you’re being watched by a military drone. Also, take note of Australian journalists using drones to fly over an immigration detention facility. — Matt Waite
Drones could soon be in the skies over Nebraska,... →
Drone lab founder Matt Waite and fellow University of Nebraska-Lincoln researcher Vishal Singh talk about drones for Omaha TV station KETV.
Eye3 Done Officially Too Good To Be True →
I linked to the Kickstarter project before. This update show’s that was a mistake.
The Drone as Privacy Catalyst →
The development of American privacy law has been slow and uneven; the advancement of information technology has not. The result is a widening chasm between our collective and individual capacity to observe one another and the protections available to consumers and citizens under the law.
NYT: Drones Sets Sights on U.S. Skies →
But while businesses, and drone manufacturers especially, are celebrating the opening of the skies to these unmanned aerial vehicles, the law raises new worries about how much detail the drones will capture about lives down below — and what will be done with that information. Safety concerns like midair collisions and property damage on the ground are also an issue.
Onboard footage of the activist drone shootdown →
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.
Activists use drone to monitor hunting, hunters... →
I ask you: Is drone trespassing new legal ground or old ground viewed in new ways? Are drones a new form of trespassing or do old rules apply? Do property owners have the right to shoot down a drone over their property? Is there a legal argument to be made for the people who shot down this drone, who apparently knew it was going to be used for a purpose they disagreed with or even presumably felt...
Congress: FAA must open airspace to drones by 2015 →
An FAA budget bill awaiting the president’s signature requires the FAA to open the nation’s airways to drones by Sept. 30, 2015 and provide a plan on how to do that due nine months after the bill passes. From the story:
The FAA is also required under the bill to provide military, commercial and privately-owned drones with expanded access to U.S. airspace currently reserved for manned...
January 2012
9 posts
LAPD cracks down on drone aircraft use by real... →
eye3 on Kickstarter: Want →
Update: The Eye3 appears to be vaporware.
eye3 is a project to create a professional quality yet affordable flying robotic camera platform, or Drone. Almost anyone attempting to build a platform like the eye3 will be stunned by the complexity involved and the years of hands on experience needed to create a functional, safe device. The incredibly steep learning curve combined with the high cost...
Supreme Court GPS case ruling: A warning shot for... →
The United States Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police cannot attach a GPS tracker to someone’s car without first getting clearance from a court. The link goes to a Wall Street Journal story about the opinion. In summary, the majority of the court ruled that the GPS devices were not a trivial matter, and that they warranted judicial review before their use. Using the small,...
Citizen drone spots meat packing plant pollution →
A fascinating report about a citizen taking his simple aircraft up with a point and shoot camera and spotting pollution flowing from a Dallas area meat packing plant. The really amazing part: “This flight was undertaken completely within the law, below 400′ and visual line of sight. A simple point and shoot camera and $75 airframe are all that were needed.”
Learning from crashing: Failure is always an... →
If you are interested in getting started in drone journalism, I highly suggest you first try a small, cheap, indoor RC helicopter equipped with a low-resolution camera. It will go up into the air, hit something, fall to the ground. And the images will not be great. And sometimes it will just fall over for no apparent reason. And you will fail.
Drones: Coming Soon to a Sky Near You? →
WNYC’s On the Media radio program talked to the Drone Journalism Lab’s Matt Waite about drones for reporting.
Livestreaming Journalists Want to Occupy the Skies... →
Interview with Tim Pool and Spencer Mills of OccuCopter fame. Interesting take on the skill needed to hack a Parrot drone.
The story behind those Russian drone protest... →
An interview with the founders of AirPano, the group that shot those stunning images of the Russian election protests.
Lesson: Budget for replacement parts
The crash broke the front facing camera, grounding the drone. A replacement part has been ordered. But just a rather obvious note for anyone thinking about this: Budget for replacement parts. Lots of them. Crashing is a part of this, especially starting out.
December 2011
19 posts
Crash report No. 1
In the spirit of being as open and transparent with my experiments with the drone, I’m going to write up major crashes like the National Transportation Safety Board writes up real crashes. — Matt Waite
Executive Summary:
At about 5:30 p.m. CST Dec. 28, 2011 during a test flight to gauge the effectiveness of a new camera mount, the drone operator lost control of the aircraft while it...
1 tag
Occupy Wall Street's 'occucopter': Who's watching... →
“The question is, do we really want the paranoiac nightmare of our airspace being polluted by police and personal drones with all of us watching our watchers?”
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Toward the crowdsourcing of an ethics of citizen... →
Interesting post, interesting comments: “There are complex concerns regarding the ethical use of drones, the most important being public safety. There are ways in which drones may become more hazardous than helpful to the public. The operators of these drones have to know what they are doing and no citizens should be harmed in the event of a crash landing or other loss of control. And...
BBC CoJo: Spy planes: the news industry's eyes in... →
The development of relatively low cost unmanned aircraft systems fitted with small high definition cameras is also beginning to generate interest in the news industry.
5 things you need to know about drone journalism →
The idea that a drone, or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), can become an eye-in-the-sky witness taking pictures or video of protests or other breaking news events is a timely one. There’s a lot going on, here’s what journalists need to know to get started.
WatchCNN’s coverage of the Russian protest drone.
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Noting reactions to drones for journalism
I’ll admit: I expected privacy concerns. I expected the “OMG the MEDIA has PREDATORS” tweets. And I expected people to ask if they could shoot down a drone over their property.
But I didn’t expect UFOs.
UFOs? UFOs.
For the record, and in case you don’t click the links, no, there weren’t UFO’s over a protest in Moscow. It was a drone mounted camera. You...
More on the Moscow protest photos
Check out this amazing image of protests in Moscow taken from a drone mounted Canon digital SLR.
Check out more here from Ridus.ru, a citizen journalism agency in Russia.
Now we’re starting to see the back story. You can read the whole post here, in Russian, from AirPano.ru, a Russian panoramic photo agency. What I can tell from a Google Translate — sorry, my Russian is a little...
Citizen journalists in Russia use drone mounted... →
The Google translate of the text isn’t so hot, but it does say they used an RC helicopter to get the images.
LAT: Local law enforcement using border patrol's... →
A Predator returning from a routine northern border patrol is diverted to help a North Dakota sheriff arrest members of the Sovereign Citizen Movement who had chased him off their property. Surveillance from two miles up, and a congresswoman who said this isn’t what they authorized.
NatGeo field testing drones →
“There’s no guarantee’s whatsoever that this will work,” photographer Michael “Nick” Nichols said.
The People's Drones →
Is a robot arms race upon us? And is a check on power open-source drones for the masses? Interesting questions.
Look, Up In The Sky! It's A Drone, Looking At You →
An NPR piece on civilian uses of drones drawing fire from some quarters. Again, read the comments if you want to see how a section of the audience is reacting to this idea. — Matt Waite
Q&A on Drone Journalism →
Ben Welsh, a developer at the LA Times and a friend, asked me some questions about the lab and put them on his personal blog. He asks about our plans, our funding and the reaction we got at the News Foo camp in Phoenix this weekend.
— Matt Waite
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What is drone journalism?
With the FAA set to open the nation’s airways to civilian unmanned aircraft, the potential uses for drones outside of the military are starting to open up. And that raises a question: Could you do journalism from a drone?
That’s a question we want to try and answer at the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications....
November 2011
3 posts
1 tag
FAA Fact Sheet - Unmanned Aircraft Systems →
“The design of many UASs makes them difficult to see and adequate “detect, sense and avoid” technology is years away. Decisions being made about UAS airworthiness and operational requirements must fully address safety implications of UASs flying in the same airspace as manned aircraft, and perhaps more importantly, aircraft with passengers.”
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Look! Up in the sky! It's a drone. →
And the response to the FAA opening the airways to drones starts here. Note the comments as well. If drones are to be a tool for journalists, they’re going to have to answer questions and criticisms like these.
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Idea of civilians using drone aircraft may soon... →
The Federal Aviation Administration will propose rules for civilian drone use in January, opening the door for drone use outside of the military. But questions ranging from detection and avoidance technology to privacy concerns are all still open.