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Comment by sillysaurus3 | Hacker News Reader

People often worry about future visual/noise pollution due to drones. It seems realistic to assume that drones will eventually be as common of a sight as cars, or at least as common as seeing a plane. They're very useful in a variety of contexts, and history has shown that useful things will eventually become widespread.

Personally, I'm undecided about the visual/noise pollution issue. On one hand, I can't wait to live in the future. On the other hand I can see how it might become a problem, especially if they're very noisy and the drones are flying at night.

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Another problem we'll have initially is safety. Drones might pretty cool and useful, until one drops from they sky and mauls pedestrians or vehicles.

So, at least in areas with a lot of people, the same places where small drones can be very useful, there needs to be quite a large built in safety. This means encrypted communication for drone control, resilience for radio jamming, quite a lot of built in autonomous abilities to handle anomalities. And probably some big physical changes to lower potential damage. Don't underestimate the damage small fast spinning propellers can do.

Initially this might mean drones either get banned, or get banned after the 1. incident, slowing down adoption and increasing cost to make them safer.

I think both can easily be addressed by having flight corridors - much akin to virtual roads in the sky. It does take away some of the freedom / versatility / ability to go as the crow flies; but would ensure a degree of safety / sanity.

I think it shouldn't be impossible to establish a protocol for drones nearing each other to avoid collision and restricted zones. Of course, they'll all need to be equipped with a parachute and probably other forms of emergency damage control as well.

EDIT: the important damage to control would be that of citizens on the ground. I'm not suggesting drones should prioritize their own safety.

"Sense and avoid" is the current holy grail of UAV research.

Restricted zones have some interesting effects. DJI, a Chinese multirotor manufacturer, recently introduced 'no-fly zones' around airports for their ultra-consumer-level uav, the phantom 2. An unfortunate side effect, in the UK at least, is you are now unable to fly your phantom 2 in areas where it is perfectly legal to do so. I believe this limitation also effects where you can place waypoints on their more advanced autopilots.

They also prevent you flying over or near Tienanmen square...

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