Drones have been front and center in the news lately. This is an older technology that is newly available to the general public. Drones went from being used primarily by the US Government to now being used by real estate agents to with a couple of hundred dollars to burn. We all knew of their existence, but now we can actually afford to have our own! The definition of a drone is an “Unmanned Aerial Vehicle” Basically it’s a remote controlled flying object with no human on board. A human controls the drone behind the scenes, plotting its route turn by turn.
When used in war, drones have been very controversial. The military requires that there still be what they call a “man in the loop,” which is a human ground controller that is making decisions on how the onboard weapons are used during drone attacks. There have also been concerns about drone mishaps while the military is out testing them. There have been more than a few reports of military drones falling from the sky over the last few years. There have been around 400 large drone crashes reported in the US since 2001.
The US has some pretty strict regulations on drones in regards to where they can fly and what they can be used to record. In the US drones are not allowed to fly within five miles of an airport. This rule was not as strict in Canada, but that might change soon. A story in the news this week reported that a drone was spotted near an airplane that was coming in for a landing. This is unnerving for a few different reasons. The first concern naturally is terrorist-related. There is nothing to say that drones that fly near the airport can’t be armed with some self-detonating device that could cause a tragedy if it gets too near a plane. The other concern is if the drone hits an airplane in a sensitive area, like inside the jet, which is enough to take down an entire plane.
The US is also cracking down on the use of drones for business purposes. The problem with using drones for real estate photography is that they are being used commercially, which would require a permit from the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration.) Drones can give potential home buyers an aerial view of their potential new property.
Even though the first drone was designed back in the 1950s, they still seem so futuristic; like something straight out of The Jetsons. They are something that we are going to have to get used to as drone popularity grows.
