4 ms·
So now every RC aircraft is a "drone"?
by scoot 6y ago
So now every RC aircraft is a "drone"?
- ethanbond 6y agoSure, why not?
- Shared404 6y agoI even have a reason why drone is better: Drone is one syllable, RC Aircraft is four.
- leetcrew 6y agotechnically, a drone has some capability for autonomous flight, at the very least something like the ability to travel from waypoint A to B without human control. at this point the horse has already left the barn; any RC quadcopter is a "drone" as far as the general public is concerned. and to be fair, the sophisticated stability controls on a typical quad makes it a lot more similar to a drone (using the narrow definition) than a fairly primitive RC aircraft.
- tzs 6y agoProbably should add something in about drones must not have an onboard human pilot, or most modern airliners would count as drones. Their autopilots are almost all capable of waypoint to waypoint travel without human control (and often much more).
- InitialLastName 6y agoThis argument here is why the ATC controller used the term "UAV" to provide the option.
- bigbubba 6y ago> technically, a drone has some capability for autonomous flight, at the very least something like the ability to travel from waypoint A to B without human control I dispute that. Radio controlled target drones predate the [semi] autonomous drones seen today. The first drone was a radio controlled de Havilland Tiger Moth called Queen Bee. The term 'drone' is a play on that name. Drone bees fly once then die, just as radio controlled airplanes being used as targets for anti-aircraft guns only fly once.
- callamdelaney 6y agoThat's kind of what a drone is
- marcosdumay 6y agoHum... It's supposed to be a mindless agent capable of performing some task, but that's a too last century definition. Nowadays it's anything that flies... I guess ants would be amazed by that definition if they weren't so individually mindless.
- 0xffff2 6y agoIn aviation in particular, "drone" used to connotative an armed military UAV. At some point the term morphed, and now it does indeed seem to be entirely synonymous with the literal definition of "UAV".
- jansan 6y agoHow can you distinguish a drone from a an RC aircraft during flight?
- _jal 6y agoWell, "crypto" is an energy-intensive store of value and "phones" are internet access terminals, so why not? I get grumpy about semantic drift, too, a consequence of age.
- bigbubba 6y agoThe original drone was a [full sized, not scale model] RC aircraft.