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The laws would have to change to allow you to fly these over populated areas. There's a reason the blog post is about flying over someone's private farmland. As

The laws would have to change to allow you to fly these over populated areas. There's a reason the blog post is about flying over someone's private farmland. As a commercial company you can't even charge a farmer to fly over his land, the owner of the land has to do it himself.

JulianMorrison 13y ago
Attach transient, disposable cameras with precise positioning to wide-ranging self-piloting lifeforms not subject to FAA approval, such as city pigeons.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  While you may be kidding, such a thing with a drive by upload to a local wifi network might be possible (no opinion on practical) but basically a camera, gps module, altimiter, and wifi link. Put feeding stations on Starbucks or near other free WiFi hotspots that dispense seed if the leg unit uploads a picture.
- repsilat 13y ago
  Here's an interesting idea: drones as really autonomous entities. A script with a bitcoin account sells aerial imagery to mapping companies and uses the proceeds to pay for its own hosting and for the upkeep of its drone. It's a company that really lives "in the cloud(s)". In our present legal environment I guess the creator would still be charged with breaking the FAA regulations, but perhaps we'll live to see the day when our children will be held responsible for their own actions :)
- hnha 13y ago
  they did that in ww1 :)
malandrew 13y ago
Easy solution. Don't charge the farmer to photograph his land. Instead charge to rent the drones to the farmer so he can "fly them himself" with supervision. Just code up an interface that gives him a big green "Go" button that sets off the actual flyover sequence.
_delirium 13y ago
The need for it isn't quite as much in populated areas either, at least for OSM's purposes. Bing's aerial imagery is fairly high-resolution and timely over cities (at least cities in the western world), and they allow use of it as a layer to trace OSM features from: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing
- citrin_ru 13y ago
  hi-res Bing not always available even in Europe (e. g. http://tiny.cc/p27t6w http://tiny.cc/p27t6w) and Siberia almost not covered.
- mkesper 13y ago
  Push your local government to open up their data! Eg North Rhine-Westphalia has published an "NRW-Atlas" which can be used to draw maps from it (no automatic imports, though), the data is really good in general. http://www.bezreg-koeln.nrw.de/brk_internet/organisation/abteilung07/produkte/nrwatlas/index.html http://www.bezreg-koeln.nrw.de/brk_internet/organisation/abt... http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=22926 http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=22926 (german)

JulianMorrison 13y ago

Attach transient, disposable cameras with precise positioning to wide-ranging self-piloting lifeforms not subject to FAA approval, such as city pigeons.

ChuckMcM 13y ago
While you may be kidding, such a thing with a drive by upload to a local wifi network might be possible (no opinion on practical) but basically a camera, gps module, altimiter, and wifi link. Put feeding stations on Starbucks or near other free WiFi hotspots that dispense seed if the leg unit uploads a picture.
repsilat 13y ago
Here's an interesting idea: drones as really autonomous entities. A script with a bitcoin account sells aerial imagery to mapping companies and uses the proceeds to pay for its own hosting and for the upkeep of its drone. It's a company that really lives "in the cloud(s)". In our present legal environment I guess the creator would still be charged with breaking the FAA regulations, but perhaps we'll live to see the day when our children will be held responsible for their own actions :)
hnha 13y ago
they did that in ww1 :)

malandrew 13y ago

Easy solution. Don't charge the farmer to photograph his land. Instead charge to rent the drones to the farmer so he can "fly them himself" with supervision. Just code up an interface that gives him a big green "Go" button that sets off the actual flyover sequence.

_delirium 13y ago

The need for it isn't quite as much in populated areas either, at least for OSM's purposes. Bing's aerial imagery is fairly high-resolution and timely over cities (at least cities in the western world), and they allow use of it as a layer to trace OSM features from: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing

citrin_ru 13y ago
hi-res Bing not always available even in Europe (e. g. http://tiny.cc/p27t6w http://tiny.cc/p27t6w) and Siberia almost not covered.
mkesper 13y ago
Push your local government to open up their data! Eg North Rhine-Westphalia has published an "NRW-Atlas" which can be used to draw maps from it (no automatic imports, though), the data is really good in general. http://www.bezreg-koeln.nrw.de/brk_internet/organisation/abteilung07/produkte/nrwatlas/index.html http://www.bezreg-koeln.nrw.de/brk_internet/organisation/abt... http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=22926 http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=22926 (german)