3 ms·

Reliability. You don't want 20 lb blenders falling from the sky.

informatimago 12y ago
You don't want them to fall on people, or brittle devices. But otherwise, they could fall onto a lot of places and things without further consequences. If you consider a city like Los Angeles, with 3792621 inhabitants, and a surface of 1215e6 m², assuming each person takes 1 m² (ie. the person-drone cross section), that gives for fall points equidistributed over the surface a probability of hitting a person of 3792621/1215e6 = 0.0031; only 0.31% per fall! To hit a person with 1/2 probability, you'd need a rainfall of 160 drones! Will your drone fly over crowded areas? Most people are inside houses most of the time anyways, and there's no reason to fly over the sideways. Now, you must also consider other areas to avoid landing (or falling) on. Cars, (streets), random machinery (eg. air conditioners), power lines, etc. But all in all, that still leaves a lot of places where to crash with no consequence, if you need to crash. IMO, there's a lot of unreasonned fears about the subject (as there is about anything else; and people wonder in other threads, why the belief that humans use only 10% of their brains persists...).
- joshdance 12y ago
  True. However, current drone usage is to fly over interesting areas. These areas are interesting because of natural beauty (ocean, lake, mountain etc) or because of people. Crowds, Times Square, sporting events, etc. For example me using a drone at Park City filming my friends snowboarding has a much larger risk of hitting someone that on the empty desolate mountain 1 mile over. But no one flies drones over on that empty mountain because it is boring. I don't know what the percentage of hitting someone might be but certainly higher for current drone usage than flying a drone over a random city with equally spaced inhabitants. :) And kudos on your calculations, I had never seen this done before. This is the type of math that "news" stories need to have.
matheweis 12y ago
This, although let me add a slightly different reason... You also don't want your $3,000 piece of equipment to irrevocably fly off.

You don't want them to fall on people, or brittle devices. But otherwise, they could fall onto a lot of places and things without further consequences. If you consider a city like Los Angeles, with 3792621 inhabitants, and a surface of 1215e6 m², assuming each person takes 1 m² (ie. the person-drone cross section), that gives for fall points equidistributed over the surface a probability of hitting a person of 3792621/1215e6 = 0.0031; only 0.31% per fall! To hit a person with 1/2 probability, you'd need a rainfall of 160 drones! Will your drone fly over crowded areas? Most people are inside houses most of the time anyways, and there's no reason to fly over the sideways. Now, you must also consider other areas to avoid landing (or falling) on. Cars, (streets), random machinery (eg. air conditioners), power lines, etc. But all in all, that still leaves a lot of places where to crash with no consequence, if you need to crash. IMO, there's a lot of unreasonned fears about the subject (as there is about anything else; and people wonder in other threads, why the belief that humans use only 10% of their brains persists...).

joshdance 12y ago
True. However, current drone usage is to fly over interesting areas. These areas are interesting because of natural beauty (ocean, lake, mountain etc) or because of people. Crowds, Times Square, sporting events, etc. For example me using a drone at Park City filming my friends snowboarding has a much larger risk of hitting someone that on the empty desolate mountain 1 mile over. But no one flies drones over on that empty mountain because it is boring. I don't know what the percentage of hitting someone might be but certainly higher for current drone usage than flying a drone over a random city with equally spaced inhabitants. :) And kudos on your calculations, I had never seen this done before. This is the type of math that "news" stories need to have.

matheweis 12y ago

This, although let me add a slightly different reason... You also don't want your $3,000 piece of equipment to irrevocably fly off.