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drone’s-eye view

THE MIGHTY BLUE RIVER Award-winning photographer Mike Bishop captured the rugged beauty of this waterfall in the Canadian Rockies. With the right setup, you can capture similarly stunning colors. Find out how, starting on Page 42. FANTASTIC VOYAGE Though it chugs along at a modest 2 knots, Liquid Robotics’ Wave Glider can navigate thousands of nautical miles and is powered only by solar and wave energy. Read about other drones that break the mold on Page 38. NOW YOU SEE IT The drone’s-eye view reveals valuable information that might be impossible to see from a terrestrial vantage point. Find out how drones are changing the game for mapping and surveying industries, starting on Page 74.…

drone’s-eye view

editor’s welcome

FLIGHT LESSONS I flew my first model airplane as a sophomore in high school. I had convinced my woodshop instructor that because the kit was mostly made of wood, it counted as a viable project. So, while other kids made clocks or bird houses or whatever it was they did, I built a model plane. It was just a simple 3-channel job — rudder, elevator, and throttle. I was proud to have bought a 4-channel FM radio transmitter (no 2.5GHz spectrum back then), and I remember taking care to get all the servo throws just right. I went out, never having flown before (but having plenty of people around me who had), and took off. For seven glorious minutes, I circled the field behind the school with my plane. Then…

editor’s welcome

FOIA REQUEST REVEALS TRENDS IN PART 107 WAIVER DENIALS

WHEN THE FAA ANNOUNCED its Part 107 framework for commercial drone operation, many drone users immediately embraced the changes. One of the perks of Part 107 is its flexibility of allowing for waiver applications. Various operational restrictions can be waived, including flying from moving vehicles, flying extended or beyond visual line of sight (EVLOS and BLVOS), and flying at night. Drone360 filed an FOIA request through the FAA to access a sampling of denied Part 107 waiver applications. We received 1,656 unique waiver denials, submitted over the span of 247 days (that’s roughly 7 applications a day). Now that the program is more than a year old, there are clear trends determining the fate of most waiver applications. The FAA maintains a public database of all approved Part 107 waivers.…

FOIA REQUEST REVEALS TRENDS IN PART 107 WAIVER DENIALS

NEW TECHNOLOGY is difficult. And for most people, consumer drones are a very new technology. To go from being a difficult, new technology to mass consumer product is a challenge that drone makers are racing to meet. Undeniably, creating a drone that anyone can fly looms large over many drone manufacturers. Hence the recent popularity of personal or “selfie” drones — small, easy-to-use, and relatively affordable. The Yuneec Breeze led the way in this arena, but competitors quickly began to hit the market. The Spark is DJI’s first foray into this particular class of consumer drones. Based on DJI’s marketing of the Spark, the company wants this quad to be a drone for pretty much everyone. And the Spark’s unique features definitely make it seem like a contender: gesture control,…

MISSED CONNECTIONS

Just because I think it’s telling of my challenges with the Spark’s Wi-Fi connection and because it shows that no one’s immune to such issues, I’ll retell the story of my scariest drone moment. Drone360’s chief designer, Drew, and I were at the shore of Lake Michigan flying the Spark for the cover photo shoot for this issue of the magazine. These shoots are usually pretty straightforward in terms of drone operation — for the most part, you just kind of hover and let the photographer snap away. This was precisely the scene as I hovered the Spark about 5 or 6 feet above some rocks on the shore of the lake. Drew was snapping photos of the drone as I looked down at my screen to find my FPV…

MISSED CONNECTIONS

ZEPHYR DRONE SIMULATOR

MOST FLIGHT simulators let you do almost anything you want with a drone. Open the software, plug in a controller, and you can fly as crazily as you want, without worrying about those pesky FAA regulations or basic safety considerations. Zephyr, a drone training simulator by Little Arms Studios, is not like that. This software is designed to be a training tool, and scores your flying depending on how well you can fly while obeying basic safety rules. You can buy an individual license and use it as a personal training tool, but the software is designed first and foremost for drone schools and commercial drone pilots. The program comes standard with more than 40 training scenarios, ranging from free flight to complex flight training exercises. The software will not…

ZEPHYR DRONE SIMULATOR

FATSHARK TRANSFORMER HD GOGGLES

I’VE BEEN FLYING with FatShark’s HD V2 goggles for the better part of two years, and they have been the perfect FPV goggles for me. Then I got my hands on the FatShark Transformer HD. I’ve shared them with other drone racing pilots for several months, and they all agree: You haven’t experienced FPV until you’ve tried it with a pair of FatShark HD Goggles. The field of view on these goggles is amazing. At 55 degrees, they reach a range of immersion that other goggles have not reached. For the experienced pilot, you may find yourself “searching” with your eyes while flying due to the unusually large field of view. If you’re a new pilot, you’re in for a treat as you are totally immersed in your flying environment.…

FATSHARK TRANSFORMER HD GOGGLES

AIRDOG ADII AIRDOG, a drone-maker that began its life as a Kickstarter campaign for the original AirDog, is back with its second “self-flying action sports drone.” The ADII drone is, like its predecessor, paired with the AirLeash, a wearable, waterproof controller that allows the drone to follow whoever is wearing the device. The AirLeash works whether the subject is walking, running, or shooting down a ski hill. The onboard ground collision avoidance system will keep you and the drone safe, no matter what sort of extreme sport you’re engaged in. Look for a full review in the next issue of Drone360. HIGHLIGHTS Max speed: 40 mph Flight time: 18 minutes Price: $1,500 ($1,099 for Kickstarter preorders) PHANTOM X4 THE HITEC PHANTOM X4 charger is a four-channel battery charger designed exclusively…

2017 Women TO WATCH IN UAS

Despite a lot of talk about the challenges women face in the technology industry, women in tech remain underrepresented, underpaid, and underutilized. But the challenges sometimes get more attention than the victories: Plenty of women are defying the odds to innovate, to lead, and to advocate for each other in tech. The drone marketplace is no exception. With that in mind, Drone360 has partnered with Women And Drones to launch the inaugural Women to Watch in UAS List. The call for nominations attracted 110 submissions from seven different countries. The judging process included a final-round review by industry insiders, resulting in a list of nine winners from various sectors of the drone industry. The nine women spotlighted on these pages have made astonishing strides in areas ranging from mapping to…

2017 Women TO WATCH IN UAS

Smarter, stronger, faster

You hear about using the right drone for the job a lot in UAS circles. Usually, it means knowing whether a multirotor copter or a fixed-wing aircraft is better suited for a particular application. It also means knowing whether the aircraft is appropriately sized or fitted with the right equipment for the task at hand. But what if the drone you need isn’t an aircraft, but rather one that can navigate a building’s interior and turn doorknobs? How about an autonomous vehicle that can sail 5,000 miles and gather data on oceanic phenomena along the way? Innovative design, engineering, and software for all manner of autonomous and remotely operated vehicles have broadened the definition of what a drone is — and a drone’s capabilities. Here are four drones that you…

Smarter, stronger, faster

UNDERSTANDING AIRSPACE OPENING THE APP THE AIRSPACE ALPHABET UNFURL THE (VFR) MAPS USING AUTONOMOUS FUNCTIONS FOLLOW ME ORBIT AND POINT OF INTEREST WAYPOINTS FLYING A PERSONAL DRONE SAY HELLO TO DRONIES SNAP THE SHUTTER TIME TO ADVENTURE ADVANCE YOUR PHOTO/VIDEO GAME GET TO KNOW YOUR GIMBAL LISTEN TO THE LOCATION DUAL OPERATORS AERIAL ACROBATICS FLIPS, ROLLS, AND SPINS SPLIT-S POWER LOOP PHOTO SETTINGS & EDITING SETTINGS AND APP EDITING OUT OF THE PHONE/DRONE LAYERS AND RETOUCHING UNDERSTANDING AIRSPACE LEVEL 1 OPENING THE APP So, you’ve probably heard of a little thing called airspace. But how familiar are you with all of what that word entails? Airspace, in the most general sense, falls into two categories: controlled and uncontrolled. Uncontrolled airspace, known as Class G, is fair game for drone operation. An…

USING AUTONOMOUS FUNCTIONS

It’s easy to take a fast shot. It’s actually hard to take a good slow shot. LEVEL 1 FOLLOW ME Follow Me mode is one of the most basic functions available in many consumer drones. Drones as diverse as DJI’s Spark, Mavic Pro, Phantom 4, Inspire 2, the Yuneec Typhoon H and Breeze, and 3DR Solo all have a Follow Me function, with some slight variations. For example, the DJI Mavic Follow Me mode will track and follow the controller, while in the Active Track mode uses visual sensors to follow a subject. Other drones like the AirDog ADII use a physical tracking system, where the subject wears a watch or other device, which the drone can then follow. To use most Follow Me functions, your mobile device will need to…

USING AUTONOMOUS FUNCTIONS

FLYING A PERSONAL DRONE

LEVEL 1 SAY HELLO TO DRONIES Once you’ve read the manual and are familiar with your drone, you can do what everyone does with a new camera drone: take a bad dronie. If you’ve taken selfies before, or have a background in other types of photography, you’ll know that you want the light source to be facing you. Orient yourself so that you are facing the sun. Ideally, you’ll find an area where you’re standing in front of something that is interesting — a cool landmark, beautiful architecture, or natural backdrop. The basic flight maneuver here is really simple: Get your drone into the air, fly it a comfortable distance up and away from yourself, then use its yaw (that’ll be your left stick) to rotate the drone so it’s facing…

FLYING A PERSONAL DRONE

ADVANCE YOUR PHOTO/VIDEO GAME

LEVEL 1 GET TO KNOW YOUR GIMBAL Once you‘re confident in your flying, you will want to become equally comfortable working the gimbal — an essential tool on a drone, according to Stacy Garlington, co-owner and founder of DJI Aerial Photography Academy. Gimbal systems typically are 2-axis or 3-axis. A 2-axis gimbal provides stability on the pitch and roll axis, while a 3-axis provides stability on the yaw, pitch, and roll axis (Page 50 for details on those terms). Which one’s better? Well, the 3-axis gimbal will provide you with more stability and make sure you don’t get the Jell-O effect when flying. Most advanced drones, like the DJI Phantom 4, Mavic Pro, and Yuneec Typhoon H, have a tilt wheel, which controls the angle of the camera. There are many…

ADVANCE YOUR PHOTO/VIDEO GAME

AERIAL ACROBATICS

LEVEL 1 FLIPS, ROLLS, SPINS The most basic level of trick is the auto-flip function that you’ll find on a lot of toy drones and ready-to-fly quads — and honestly, it’s not a bad place to start. To use these features, you will simply hold the designated button and move the pitch or roll in the direction that you wish to flip. Tommy Grelecki, reviewer for Drone360 and FPV racer, explains the best way to successfully set up any good aerial acrobatics. “To set up for any of these tricks, I recommend flying straight and steady in a direction where you can see clearly that there are no obstacles,” he says. “This allows you to keep the sticks in a neutral position and assess the risk of a failed attempt.” Rolls,…

AERIAL ACROBATICS

PHOTO SETTINGS AND EDITING

LEVEL 1 SETTINGS AND APP EDITING You can’t always fix a photo in post. The best thing to do is to make sure you understand photo settings before you click the shutter. ISO is a measure of camera sensor sensitivity to available light. Use low ISO when there’s plenty of light and the sensor doesn’t need to be overly sensitive. High ISO is used when less light is available. Image quality is better at a low ISO, while higher ISO can make the image appear grainy. Find a balance between your desired ISO, lighting, and image quality before taking off. Aperture setting allows different amounts of light to enter through the lens to the camera body. Aperture adjustments and range are specific to the lens you are using, and its adjustments…

PHOTO SETTINGS AND EDITING

Here’s a thought: If you insert a 64 gigabyte SD card into your drone and start shooting 4K video until your battery runs low, chances are you didn’t even come close to filling the card. That video is data. But many businesses using drones today are underequipped to understand how to use the massive amounts of data acquired from drones. And those businesses probably don‘t need the entire video, so they’ll likely copy what’s necessary and then toss the outtakes onto a portable hard drive or just erase the card. Repeat this process about 100 times, and you can fill up a run-of-themill 1-terabyte hard drive. No problem, right? But what if instead of a standard video pod, the business uses a four-sensor multi-spectral camera that fills up a 32-gigabyte…

Alex Harmsen got his pilot’s license before he could legally drive a car. By 17, he was flying small planes in rural Canada, often for crop dusting and sometimes buzzing the neighbor’s farm for fun. After studying engineering in college, he began designing flying machines. He helped NASA design a drone that might someday fly on Mars and later became co-founder of a company that makes software for autonomous drones. When he tries to picture the dangers of drones, it’s easy for him to imagine — it looks a lot like his younger self. He knows humans are going to be flying manned aircraft to inspect infrastructure, airlift sick and injured people, crop-dust, or maybe just buzz the neighbor’s farm. “That airspace over those farms where I started flying is…

WE KNOW THIS MIGHT SOUND like a good hypothetical for stoned law students to ponder in a late-night bull session. But the first time an autonomous drone crashes and hurts a person, there will almost certainly be civil lawsuits — and possibly criminal actions. Engineers creating the systems that automate drones on the ground and in the air must consider the legal and ethical questions in addition to the practical ones. Who is legally responsible for the actions of a drone? The drone’s owner? Whoever was monitoring the drone at the time? The software developer who programmed the drone? The drone itself? In the U.S., when someone puts a device in the air over private property and the device falls and causes someone harm, that action creates a legally actionable…

DRONES IN THE IoT

WHAT IS THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IoT), and why should drone pilots care? In the most basic sense, the IoT is made up of devices that have sensors to collect data and share it with other devices through a network. A number of big name companies like Amazon.com and Google, as well as tiny startups, are all competing to put intelligent, autonomous, networked drones in the sky, under the sea, and on our roads. Because drones are flying computers that can connect to the internet, other drones, air traffic control, or directly with their operator, they ought to be a perfect fit for integration into the IoT. However, there are still a lot of big holes in that theory. Colin Snow, an industry analyst and CEO of Skylogic Research points…

Home to the world’s tallest building, the world’s most expensive hotel, and a ski resort located in a desert that never gets below freezing, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has earned its place in the popular imagination as a real-life Tomorrowland: a place where the future is happening right now. So, when the desert nation announced plans to begin an autonomous aerial taxi service using the Ehang 184, it seemed like a perfect fit. It would only make sense for such a nation to embrace drone technology in all of its forms, if only to provide further evidence of its global leadership However, the truth is much more nuanced: a product of local history, culture, and the unique circumstances in this nation. An international hub for civil aviation, the UAE…

CHARTING A COURSE

JOSEPH HUPY STUDIES DIRT More specifically, he studies soil geomorphology — the study of dirt and the Earth’s surface features. His dissertation focused on how battlefields respond to explosives and other impacts of war. In 2010, he was in Vietnam, conducting a microtopology survey of bomb craters. “Every time we left the field, my body was bleeding all over from the leeches, and there were unexploded munitions all over,” he recalls. “I said, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’ ” Hupy soon found that better way: drones. He started to use them in his own fieldwork, and then got a grant to build a fleet of drones for research. Now he’s CTO of Menet Aero, a drone services provider based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Hupy and Menet Aero Founder Peter…

CHARTING A COURSE

Active volcanoes are rife with danger — like rivers of molten rock ranging from 1300 to 2300 degrees Fahrenheit that stream from vents, spew in fountains, and spark fires. Or pyroclastic flows that blast superheated rock fragments, gases, and ash out at 50 mph or more, destroying everything in their paths in minutes. Such flows swiftly sweep natural and human-made structures away, asphyxiating humans and wildlife with ash and volcanic gases, and searing everything in temperatures up to 1300 degrees. Add in landslides, mudslides, and earthquakes — as research environments go, it’s not exactly welcoming. Now, volcanologists are using UAVs to put distance between themselves and the phenomena they study. UP CLOSE AND IMPERSONAL For many Americans, the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state is a shared touchstone…

VOLCANIC VOCABULARY

PYROCLASTIC FLOWS - fast-moving masses of dense, destructive ash, gases, and lava ejected from volcanoes. These currents typically flow down the slopes of volcanoes at high speeds, sometimes moving as quickly as 450 mph. MAGMA - a molten or semi-molten rock material originating under the Earth’s surface. It frequently collects in underground chambers that may feed into volcanoes. When magma is extruded onto the Earth’s surface, it becomes lava. Temperatures of magma can reach 1300 to 2400 degrees Fahrenheit. FUMAROLE - an opening in the Earth’s crust that releases hot steam and gases from beneath the surface. Typical gases include carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen sulfide. SO2 - the chemical formula of sulfur dioxide, a toxic gas with a pungent odor. Sulfur dioxide is a traceable component…

A DRONE WALKS INTO A VOLCANO…

TO UNDERSTAND WHAT A VOLCANO MIGHT DO, scientists need to know what’s happening beneath its surface. Sometimes, that means flying a UAV over the volcano crater or through its plume. And sometimes, it means designing a robot that will walk on the volcano’s surface — or even crawl inside it. At Tohoku University in Japan, Keiji Nagatani has been working such a system for nearly a decade. His work uses a multirotor UAV called Zion to drop a four-wheeled unmanned surface vehicle (USV) called Clover near a research site. Clover is operated via a 3G signal relay, and is outfitted with sensors to take readings — recent payloads included a navigation camera, a rain gauge, and a thunder detection sensor, Nagatani says. Zion can retract Clover when the samples are…

AERIAL X-RAYS You may remember a time where you were able to order X-ray specs through comic book advertisements. Of course, those weren’t quite functional (unless we all just happened to order duds), but drones are making it possible to look through objects. Researchers in Professor Yasamin Mostofi’s lab at UC Santa Barbara developed a system by which two octocopters use Wi-Fi signals to identify objects behind brick walls. One drone consistently transmits a signal to the other drone while autonomously flying around a brick house. The other drone uses the signals’ strength to determine the shape of objects within the house. Cool, but it might be a little more difficult to sell gullible kids on the concept of two huge drones to see the bones in their hand. THIS…

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