The must-have gift for men who like gadgets this festive season (according to numerous magazine articles) is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Remote-controlled flying drones can cost as little as 60, or run up to several thousand Euros for more professional quad and octo-copters. They could soon even be delivered by drone if Amazons tests in the East Anglian fens prove viable.Frank Wang, a 26-year old Chinese electronics engineer, began the craze in 2006 when he launched DJI to market the Phantom, a UAV with a budget to match the GoPros that it was designed to carry. Now the sector is worth more than 110bn with dozens of vendors offering photographic flying machines including Intuitive Aerial, Parrot and two times Academy Award winner Flying-Cam.
There are over 400 licensed aerial filmmaking specialists in the UK alone but that figure doesnt take into account the several thousand estimated individual hobbyist drone owners - a number which is itself expected to skyrocket come the new year.
This has raised concerns about how the sector can be policed for safety and privacy. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) regulates the UK aerial filming industry and already rules that no UAVs can be flown within 50m of a person, vehicle or building unless those are under your control. No flight is allowed within 150m of any congested area; and the UAV has to be in line of sight with the pilot at all times which means a ceiling of 120m (or 400ft) and not more than 500m away.
With UAVs such as the DJI Inspire coming to market capable of streaming HD video to mobile devices 1.7km away, this regulation is already being tested.
To be strictly legal, three people are required to operate a drone a pilot, a camera-op and a spotter, though in practice drones tend to be a two-person operation.
The rules are straight forward depending on the size of drone, explains Toby Pocock, founder of professional aerial filming outfit Skyvantage. In the sub-7kg category you have to allow a 50m radius in all directions to be clear of anyone or anything. If the drone is over 7kg its 150m. You also have to have the landowners permission to take off and land.
In contrast to helicopters which cannot fly below 500ft and are off the scale in terms of expense and practicality for most filmmakers, drones offer an affordable means of capturing new camera angles. BBC documentary The Great Wall of China' and Sky's Natural History Conquest of the Skies' are among the most recent bluechip programmes to benefit from drone filming.
Flying a UAV for professional use requires a pilots licence and a camera operator with dexterity. Pocock finds that this skill is most common in operators who have spent some time game playing with Nintendo and Playstation joysticks.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been far more restrictive on drone use to date, only relenting in September 2014 to permit six filmmaking companies to use camera-equipped drones on film and TV production sets.
They gave way under pressure from US studios which were forced to make drone shoots overseas. Sony Pictures and Paramount Pictures shot scenes with UAVs outside the US for Transformers: Age of Extinction' and Skyfall'. Millennium Films and Lionsgate went to Bulgaria to use a drone-mounted camera for The Expendables 3'.
Earlier this year the Star Wars' set at Pinewood Studios was buzzed by an aerial drone and the video posted online. The footage was apparently taken accidentally by a man taking publicity shots for a flying school, although its coverage in national papers also played into Disneys marketing.
Disney itself is finding entertainment uses for drones beyond movies. It has applied for three drone patents related to outdoor theme park shows. According to The Guardian, the company appears to want to use drones to fly projection screens into the air and to move large-sized marionettes.
Journalists, along with security agencies, have been using drones for several years to capture scenes from urban riots in Thailand and during the Arab Spring. While restrictions on their use in congested areas would prevent ITN, or other news organisations flying them down the Mall, at least one technology circumvents this. The Fotokite, which comes to market in the spring, is a drone attached to hand held leash and is classified as a kite so is exempt from many civil aviation restrictions.
Another concept combines wearable computing with drones. The Nixie flying wrist band won the $500,000 first prize in Intels Make it Wearable' competition in November and is being developed into a product.
With sensors this tiny drone could follow a short distance away from competitors in extreme sports competitions like skiing, transmitting live video of the performance. Its not too much of a leap to see how drones could also usurp the cabled aerial camera systems in sports stadia and become a staple of outside broadcast kit.
Another possibility is that there might be even larger drones flown beyond the line of sight and over longer distances.
Jim McAuslan, general secretary of the British Airline Pilots' Association said ahead of an appearance before a British Parliamentary committee in July this year: The technology is developing quickly and we could see remote aircraft the same size as a Boeing 737 being operated commercially in our skies within ten years.
IBC Content Everywhere MENA keynote on Thursday 22 January: How Innovation is Changing the News Business
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