Wickerman123
lvl.2
Flight distance : 178635 ft
United Kingdom
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Alex B. Posted at 2018-10-31 04:05
Thanks for sharing. That’s a nice idea!
One question though, does it mean that the allowed maximum distance is increased also? As with the strobe light I can see it from miles away!
Or is it still 500 meters max?
I would say this depends on how your law is worded.
In UK law, it is worded as such:
"The person in charge of a small unmanned aircraft must maintain direct, unaided visual
contact with the aircraft sufficient to monitor its flight path in relation to other aircraft, persons,
vehicles, vessels and structures for the purpose of avoiding collisions."
A strobe light is an aid and thus does not increase the allowed distance. To give my own two cents, even if I could see the strobe at 700+ meters, depth perception is virtually null at that distance so it wouldn't help in positioning the aircraft relative to it's surroundings. Personally this becomes an issue for me even at 250m+ so I can understand why that might be an issue.
I don't think it's too much of a stretch to expect some kind of Structure From Motion solution to exist in DJI products in the future - as this is how Skydio works, though with many more cameras. Having a realtime sparse point cloud generated around the drone in realtime and displayed on a mobile device or laptop viewed by an additional operator would hopefully be enough to convince the CAA to make an exception to Article 94.3. |
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