Sharing Good Practice
De-Mystifying Drones
By Tony NG and Sujith Mathew
I
n our previous article, we
introduced
the
trending
technology about drones (or
UAV)1. In acknowledgement and
support of the Year of Reading, we
will explore some myths surrounding
drones and what is factual here.
Myth #1: Drones are just toys
like model RC airplanes.
Model airplanes normally require
operators to control during flight at
all time while within line of sight of
the planes. On the other hand, drones
with advance sensors onboard not
only can fly without visual line of sight,
they can also fly autonomously without
human control.
We have debunked this myth in our
previous drone introduction article.
In summary, we concentrated on
commercial, civilian or recreational
drones. On top of flying drone as
recreational toy, other uses can be for
social needs, service improvements or
30 | Mar - Apr 2016 |
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public good. Some of the application
areas are; disaster relief, humanitarian
aid, economic development, public
health, education, civil defense,
logistics,
environment
control,
infrastructure
development,
and
tourism. In 2014, UAE launched world
first “Drones For Good” Award2 to
encourage the development of dronerelated technology.
“The
UAE
Drones
for
Good Award is dedicated
to
transforming
innovative
behind
the
technologies
civilian
drones
into practical, realisable
solutions for improving
people’s lives today.”
Class Time
Myth #2: Drones must be
remotely-controlled by
someone.
As mentioned above, drones can fly
autonomously without human control.
Further with technology advances,
a full-size autonomous unmanned
passenger-carrying
drone 3
was
unveiled at the Consumer Electronics
Show (CES) in January 2016.
Myth #3: You don’t need any
skill to fly a drone.
Unlike flying a real plane, you don’t
need to have piloting skill to control a
drone. However, it does not mean that
you don’t need any skill at all to fly one.
As drones can also move freely in three
dimensions, “Roll, Pitch, and Yaw4”
are techniques used in parts of drone
flight controls (orientation). A change
in any one of the three types of motion
affects the other two. Also, you may
need to know some of the following