Police drone plunged 70ft into pond after operator mashed pop-up that was actually the emergency cut-out button
- Reference: 1611051607
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/01/19/sussex_police_drone_crash_crawley/
- Source link:
The blunder happened after the hapless operator of the Aeryon Skyranger R60 accidentally button-mashed the drone's "emergency cut-out function icon".
[1]
According to the Air Accidents Investigation Branch's (AAIB) summary report, the 3.5kg drone's 1am flight ended with it being destroyed after a 70ft drop – just yards from family homes in Crawley, West Sussex.
Back in June last year police were searching for a missing person near Maidenbower Pond, next to Three Bridges railway depot. Police were using the quadcopter's onboard thermal camera to hunt for the individual.
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An unnamed 33-year-old with just six hours' experience flying drones, and four hours of flying the Skyranger type, was operating the craft when an unfamiliar warning popped up on its flight controller.
"He did not realise the message was a warning and attempted to clear it but in doing so the aircraft motors cut out, causing the [unmanned aircraft] to fall from a height of about 70 ft into the pond below," said the AAIB in its report.
Investigators added that an object of similar weight to the Skyranger drone could cause fatal injuries to somebody wearing a hard hat if dropped from a height of just four metres, or 13 feet.
The emergency cut-out "is accessed by holding the stylus over an icon on the flight controller screen showing a white aircraft on a black background. This causes the aircraft shadow under the icon to flash red," explained the AAIB. "By tapping the icon three times within three seconds the emergency cut out function is activated."
Aeryon confirmed that "the cut-out screen icon had been activated three times within three seconds", stopping all four of the quadcopter's motors.
Sussex Police has been asked whether the Skyranger was being flown within the limits of the force's Police Air Operators Certificate, which regulates how and where police may fly aircraft within the UK. The AAIB said police were allowed to fly drones after just two hours' in-house training, a practice endorsed by the Civil Aviation Authority.
Hollywood drone pilot admits he crashed gizmo into cop chopper, triggering emergency landing [3]READ MORE
"Recent AAIB investigations reveal a lack of understanding by some UAS pilots of fundamental operational factors such as weather limitations and the handling of aircraft warnings and failures," cautioned the safety investigation board.
This isn't the first time that drones near Crawley have [4]landed Sussex Police in hot water .
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Neither is the police force completely alone in doing unfortunate things with drones. A few years ago one crashed on a building site after its operator [6]failed to spot a 300ft crane that somebody had erected, while in 2019 a drone flung itself to earth after [7]a 25kV railway cable's magnetic field confused its compass . ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_emergent_tech/internet_of_things&sz=300x250&tile=2&c=2YAa7ySu2fj-gQgfxoYiaWQAAABc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_emergent_tech/internet_of_things&sz=300x250%7C300x252%7C300x600&tile=3&c=33YAa7ySu2fj-gQgfxoYiaWQAAABc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/16/drone_helicopter_crash/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/15/gatwick_drone_couple_payout/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_emergent_tech/internet_of_things&sz=300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251&tile=4&c=44YAa7ySu2fj-gQgfxoYiaWQAAABc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2018/01/16/drone_crane_crash/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/21/drone_electromagnetic_interference/
[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Fail safe?
What sort of emergency cutout allows you to stop all rotors when 70' up? I could understand a shutoff like that when the device is at ground level, perhaps to avoid injury, but surely "cutoff when at 70feet" should trigger a safe landing first?
Re: Fail safe?
Or at least, for something so critical, some text instead of an (obviously) ambiguous icon ?
Re: Fail safe?
Yes, you really do want this ability. If the craft gets confused (Can be caused by something as simple as a loose motor or arm) then it can be ascending even when throttle is set to 0 (Most quads, even when throttle is set to 0, are still spinning props, because you need spinning props to control pitch/roll/yaw)
Granted, a GPS-equipped quad can *maybe* work out that it isn't actually doing what it thinks it is doing, but to be safe you would always want a failsafe cutout
Do Thales make police drones too?
Have they added the Army's Watchkeeper lithobraking technology to police drones now?
Is this what people mean when they talk about the militarisation of the police?
Do I read this right that the plod pilots don't have to have a CAA cert to fly a working drone?
Yet as a private flyer I have to be registered and take a test
No-one does any more - the new rules don't differentiate between recreational and commercial use - it's all to do with weight of drone and where you want to fly it.
"police were allowed to fly drones after just two hours' in-house training"
That appears to be quite insufficient. I think they should boost that to 10.
Maybe even 11.
Figures - police allowed to fly a 3.5kg drone in a built up area after just 2hrs training, but a hobbyist pilot has to do a >4hr "A2 CofC" to fly a 0.25kg drone and with more restrictions on where they can fly - a 14x heavier drone with half as much training (And to be fair most people doing an A2 CofC already probably have many hours under their belt)
Won't somebody think of the ducklings?
...dropping it squarely into a pond...Investigators added that an object of similar weight to the Skyranger drone could cause fatal injuries to somebody wearing a hard hat if dropped from a height of just four metres, or 13 feet.
I mentioned this crash a couple of days ago advocating police drones are safer than police helicopters. I said if a drone fell then nobody would die, but I'm happy to stand corrected. I'd still rather a drone fell on me than a helicopter. And as a tax-payer (?) I'd rather pay for a drone over a cop-ter.
Great UI
(tap) Why won't this thing (tap) go away? (tap) Ah, that's got it. Now where's my bloody drone got to?
I would have used the joke icon, but this sort of thing is deadly serious.
Allo Allo Allo
What’s this for then....?
Touch screen emergency shut off?
This is a terrible user interface design. Anything as serious as an emergency kill switch needs to be a real, physical switch under a guard mechanism. The cost of such an addition would be a small fraction of the total hardware cost for one of these units.
3 points and To Count (if you know, you know) and definitely cake fine time