Droning onward

JDUNN

September 29, 2014

A Kaepernick-tracker drone could someday be employed to help teams rob San Francisco of victory, just as the Chicago Bears did Sept. 14 in the first game played by the 49ers at their $1.2 billion new Levi’s stadium in Santa Clara.

[caption id="attachment_99925" align="alignleft" width="332"] UAV operator Steve Haga flies his quadcopter in Petaluma.[/caption]

Drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) unleash perplexing business, law enforcement and privacy issues as the zooming technology outflies Federal Aviation Administration efforts to regulate U.S. air space. Sales of UAVs have taken off, according to a drone seller in Petaluma. Anyone can place sophisticated GoPro-type cameras in the air nearly anywhere, anytime. But they cannot make money, according to the rules.

The FAA expects to release needed new guidelines on UAVs in 2015, or even late this year. Until then, drone pilots who use their crafts for commercial use fly scared, dodging FAA scrutiny to avoid fines.

One business use could be in professional sports such as the NFL.

Quarterback Colin Kaepernick threw passes to players on the wrong team in that 49ers game, particularly Brandon Marshall, the Chicago Bears receiver who plucked two of Kaep’s tosses out of the air, grabbing the ball and the game.

A tiny unmanned aerial vehicle weighing barely a pound could fly directly over Kaepernick during entire games, videotape his moves in real time, rise up during plays to show perspective then drop down to reveal how he navigates a pounding field of defensive Bears. The device could feed data into a computer, analyze it and spit out Kaepernick’s vulnerabilities – moments when he’s likely to let loose a sloppy pass.

Other such fanciful applications could include giving viewers dramatic, entertaining new footage on every play, especially focusing on star players.FAA frowns on drones for business

But sorry, the FAA maintains, commercial use of UAVs is illegal and subject to fines. If you fly them as a hobbyist, fine; just don’t do business.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos predicted in December 2013 that the company would deliver packages via drones within four to five years -- if the FAA approves. That’s an if with a giant wingspan.

For now, the Napa quake on Aug. 24 provided an extraordinary glimpse of the potential news value of footage from a quadcopter, a UAV that resembles an electric helicopter with four tiny propellers. Hobbyist Evan Kilkus piloted his DJI Phantom 2 Vision-Plus equipped with a video camera nearly street by street through the damaged town to reveal a hummingbird’s glimpse of cracks, crumbled masonry and collapsed walls. Mr. Kilkus, 30, a Napa resident and recent graduate with a hospitality and tourism management degree, edited an hour of footage down to a riveting six-minute YouTube clip seen by some 230,000 viewers.

[caption id="attachment_99927" align="alignleft" width="200"] Evan Kilkus flew his quadcopter through quake-damaged Napa.[/caption]

“I’m looking at creative options to help businesses in the Napa Valley market themselves,” Mr. Kilkus said in a recent interview. When he took the quake footage, he had been flying the drone only two months. “This technology caught up,” he said. “It allows amazing stuff for $1,400. It’s a challenging object to fly. I practiced every day.”

An amateur videographer, he has high-flying aims to build a business around his quadcopter skills; his brother is a pro fashion photographer. “I knew he’d see it, so it had to be good,” Mr. Kilkus said. His dad, also a video buff, was formerly quality-assurance VP for a Petaluma telecommunications company.

“The more I operate this remote-controlled helicopter, the more I find similarities” to jet skis, which he used to race, Mr. Kilkus said. “You are always kind of skipping and sliding a bit. You have to anticipate where the machine is going to drift, putting that together with getting quality video shots.”

His goal in making the video was not to take viewers on a dramatic tour of Napa quake carnage. “There was so much life left in the buildings,” he said. “While they were damaged, there was a lot of potential. I wanted to show in the video that there was a peaceful elegance to what was remaining. It was something that hadn’t been done before.”

The quadcopter has prop guards that protect each set of propellers from damage when it makes contact with a building or other object. “You can bring it close to buildings,” he said, “even gently bump into them” and it bounces off. “If something were to happen and it were to fall down to the ground, that is protection before the propeller were to hit somebody.” The Phantom 2 weighs two pounds, five ounces.

Larger octacopters or hexacopters can carry heavier video cameras for use in the movie industry, Mr. Kilkus said. “It’s a good way to communicate from an aerial perspective,” he said.

“The cost has gone down to be able to make amazing, breathtaking aerial videos that are Internet-quality,” he said. On behalf of a real estate agent, he flew his quadcopter around an estate for sale in Napa. “We did a test video. I think the Realtor is happy,” he said. “The way these Realtors are able to use footage from quadcopters is by paying for the editing services,” he said, drawn from footage he acquired as a hobbyist, roughly $300 to $1,000. “They don’t pay me to fly a quadcopter for them,” he said.

GPS-equipped quadcopter prices have declined and navigation has improved. “The FAA is realizing they’ve got to reclassify these things,” Mr. Kilkus said. The FAA defined drones several years ago when small devices were not on the market; drones were nearly 15 feet in diameter. “Now we have this new technology still being classified as the same thing.”

“I’m trying not just to do photography,” he said, but push into marketing the service, such as making vineyard video for winery Facebook pages.

He flew his Phantom 2 to the walls of a damaged court building and a church. “I probably did go one inch” inside the building in quest of good footage, he said. “You could see the pews inside the church.” Trefethen Family Vineyards asked him to shoot video of damage at the red-tagged winery, also located in Napa.

He did a fly-around for engineer Gregory Bickett, owner of Rocklin-based Bickett Engineering, to assess quake damage at First United Methodist Church in Napa. “They wanted to fix things. They had their contractors and engineers there ready to start. Their next step would have been to climb on the roof to see what the problems were. They were considering using the fire department to bring their ladder trucks. These things would have been enormously expensive or dangerous,” he said. “I spent 15 minutes flying around the whole building. They were able to see instantly how deep the cracks were, what kind of metal was in the concrete, now exposed.”Quadcopter sales lift off

[caption id="attachment_99928" align="alignleft" width="300"] Arthur Benemann, left, and Dr. Brandon Basso of 3D Robotics prepare their aerial drones for demonstration flights on Earth Day 2014 at Iron Horse Vineyards in Sebastopol. (Alvin Jornada / The Press Democrat)[/caption]

Steve Elliott, for 10 years the owner of Fundemonium in Petaluma, will move the store to Rohnert Park in October. He sold about three dozen quadcopters, many in the range of $750, in the past three years. Sales are increasing as manufacturers add cameras and trim prices. The store has a fancy model available for about $1,500. “For most people, that’s still viable as a hobby,” he said. “It’s a way of experiencing flight, and being in control.” Electronic goggles are available so the operator can have a drone’s eye view of the flight. Much more sophisticated and expensive unmanned aerial vehicles are available, costing tens of thousands of dollars, with six or eight motors.

[caption id="attachment_99929" align="alignright" width="300"] Steve Haga puts his quadcopter through a few aerial spins outside Steve Elliott's store.[/caption]

“Commercial business use of quads is still up in the air,” Mr. Elliott said. “The FAA is trying to figure out what level regulation they’re going to do.” The FAA had ruled that commercial use is not allowed, but a few months ago, a circuit court judge ruled that the FAA has no jurisdiction over drones and struck down its regulations. The FAA is appealing the ruling. The Academy of Model Aeronautics filed a petition in court challenging FAA restrictions imposed on hobby drone pilots. A comment period in the action ended on Sept. 23. Regarding the crossover into commercial use, “the AMA and FAA are trying to work things out,” Mr. Elliott said.

Hobbyist pilots based in American Canyon use drones in a kind of aerial dogfight combat called Game of Drones, said Mr. Elliott. The drones crash into each other at strategic angles, inflicting damage. The last drone flying wins the match. “They are really getting popular and generating a big buzz,” Mr. Elliott said, especially in the past year. The games evolved out of paintball wars; quadcopters were used to resupply paintball ammo. “It’s all about how you engineer your quadcopter to make it more durable,” he said. “It’s a really cool thing.”

Considering prospective UAV use by the NFL to cover games, Mr. Elliiott said, although UAVs are very reliable, it would not be good if one were to interfere with a football pass. The NFL already zips cameras across the field, suspended from cables. The drone “gives you a whole different perspective, to see it from a bird’s-eye view,” Mr. Elliott said. He said customers are looking at all kinds of other business applications.

“Drones, cameras -- people think this is something crazy new. We have been selling little digital video cameras about the size of a stick of gum for six years or more," he said. "People have been mounting them in their airplanes and in cars and helicopters and taking photos.” But the stability of new drones, their ease of flying, and development of higher-resolution cameras have created strong interest in the devices, he said. “It makes sense for this to be a viable commercial thing.”

Realtors can take pictures of properties for sale. Golf course owners can do detailed fly-through tours of all 18 holes to entice golfers. Parks can use drone flights to market their beauty. “It has been popular with wedding photography,” Mr. Elliott said, “flying in from the heavens to the happy couple on the hill. Before, if somebody wanted that, they had to spend tens of thousands of dollars to rent a real helicopter. Now somebody with a quadcopter and a camera, and an investment of under $2,000, can do it with very high quality.”

Steve Haga, a former electronics engineer who wrote software for telephone applications, has worked at Fundemonium for nearly four years and is a UAV addict. Before he got the job at Fundemonium, he calculates, he had spent some $16,000 on the flighty toys.

The GPS on his DJI Phantom quadcopter is so sophisticated that if something goes wrong, it flies up 60 feet in the air, figures out where it is and flies back to where it started. The quadcopter, which cost about $700, has a battery that lasts up to 10 minutes. Newer models manage 20 minutes.

He added a $113 Swann camera and a gimbal that stabilizes the lens using a gyroscope. He has flown his quadcopter, which he bought about two years ago, at a remote-control racetrack. “This one is so easy to fly, you can relax and enjoy it,” Mr. Haga said. “The little ones, you have to be flying them all the time. These are so stable, you can concentrate on getting the picture you want.”

He has taken his quadcopter over a golf course to photograph its greenery and challenges. Some customers use the devices to inspect buildings, flying slowly along walls to check for maintenance problems. “You fly right by the side of the building, videoing the whole thing,” Mr. Haga said, “Firefighters use them to check out a roof before anybody sets foot on it, see whether it looks safe” at a fire scene.

“One guy was delivering beer to ice fishermen in Michigan,” Mr. Haga said, chuckling. “He got shut down because he had to pass too close to an airport.” FAA rules state that UAVs cannot go within five miles of airports, he said.

Some UAVs can be programmed to follow their operators, like an aerial dog following an electronic heel command. “You want it 50 feet on the right. You go riding your mountain bike. It can go up to 45 miles an hour,” Mr. Haga said. “It’s another way to do a selfie, taking a picture doing something crazy.”Drones show high promise for assisting law enforcementSept. 29, 2014

John Noland, a lieutenant with the Santa Rosa police department, wrote a paper in 2012 on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in law enforcement for a college program on police management. And he sees great potential for the devices in police work.Government scrambles to regulate UAVsSept. 29, 2014

Governor Brown on Sept. 28 vetoed AB 1327, which would require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant for drone surveillance absent certain circumstances. The law also prohibits weaponized drones; mandates destruction of most drone data after a year; requires that public agencies provide notice to the public before using drones; and allows local governments to adopt more restrictive measures on drones.