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| Maker of drone that crashed on White House lawn to reprogram its GPS |
| 2015-01-29 |
| The manufacturer of the drone that crashed on the White House lawn earlier this week says it is working to prevent future such incidents by erecting a no-fly zone in the devices' flight software. The update will essentially prevent the popular Phantom quadcopter from flying within the D.C. airspace. DJI, which makes the drone that buzzed the presidential grounds, said Wednesday that it's rolling out an update in the next few days that will force its drones to obey a federal no-fly notice to pilots in the Washington, D.C., area. When users are within the 15-mile restricted zone, the drone's motors will not be allowed to spin up, effectively grounding the vehicle. The update will add a list of GPS coordinates to the drone's computer telling it where it can and can't go. Here's how that system works generally: When a drone comes within five miles of an airport, Perry explained, an altitude restriction gets applied to the drone so that it doesn't interfere with manned aircraft. Within 1.5 miles, the drone will be automatically grounded and won't be able to fly at all, requiring the user to either pull away from the no-fly zone or personally retrieve the device from where it landed. The concept of triggering certain actions when reaching a specific geographic area is called "geofencing," and it's a common technology in smartphones. |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |
| #2 Why should DC have to live in an altered reality? I think they should have to deal with the same crap I do. Drones, ID theft, fiscal responsibility, the list goes on. |
| Posted by: gorb 2015-01-29 14:00 |
| #1 And the bad guys will have a patch out pronto to negate this. One wonders what would happen if a bad actor decided to "flood the zone". |
| Posted by: jay-dubya 2015-01-29 10:05 |