Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. News

Hobby drones halt firefighting efforts in California

By

We need to talk about amateur drone pilots. Emergency workers tackling wildfires in San Bernardino County, California, were forced to halt air operations for 20 minutes after five hobby drones were spotted in the area. Presumably they were being operated by drone enthusiasts looking to get dramatic pictures of the blaze.

No lives were lost as firefighters tackled the blaze on Interstate 15, leading from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, but water drops were put on hold until the area was clear. Officials say the use of drones is on the rise and they pose “a major safety threat” to those tackling the fire: “When a hobby drone is flown into a fire area, incident commanders have no choice but to suspend air operations and ground aircraft until the drone is removed.”

Recommended Videos

“Fortunately, there were no injuries or fatalities to report, but the 15 to 20 minutes that those helicopters were grounded meant that 15 to 20 minutes were lost that could have led to another water drop cycle, and that would have created a much safer environment and we would not have seen as many citizens running for their lives,” San Bernardino County Fire Department spokesman Eric Sherwin told CNN.

Related

Fire chiefs took the opportunity to repeat warnings about the Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) that accompany most wildfires. Eventually, the drones left and firefighting efforts could continue. No attempt has been made to confiscate the drones or identify the pilots using them: “Our focus was on fighting the fire,” says Sherwin.

The FAA is still mulling over commercial legislation for drone use but as far as hobbyists go, you should be flying your drone below 400 feet and keeping it in sight at all times. In addition, you should “not interfere with manned aircraft operations” and stay well away from airports. Despite this code of conduct we’re seeing an increasing number of problems as compact drones become cheaper and more popular.

[Image courtesy of San Bernardino County Fire Department]

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
David Nield
David Nield
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Dave is a freelance journalist from Manchester in the north-west of England. He's been writing about technology since the…
California startup’s drone software tracks social distancing from the air
Drone Sunset

A California-based startup has created new drone software capable of monitoring the degree of social distancing and face-mask wearing occurring in real time in any given location.

Founded in 2015, Airspace Systems' main business focuses on creating software for drone detection, helping places like airports and stadiums to monitor their skies for rogue drones entering restricted airspace. But its latest offering monitors people, not drones, and could assist a number of states across the U.S. as they try to contain coronavirus outbreaks, Reuters reports.

Read more
This next-gen firefighting robot has a spotter drone and a foam blaster
robot firefighter

 

It’s the early hours of the morning. An explosion at a chemical plant, caused when multiple containers caught fire, has triggered a blaze that’s now raging out of control. Worse, the plant is located in the middle of a densely wooded area, causing a small patch of trees to start burning. Visibility is poor. It’s a bad situation with the potential to get a whole lot worse in a hurry.

Read more
Rivian set to unlock unmapped roads for Gen2 vehicles
rivian unmapped roads gen2 r1t gallery image 0

Rivian fans rejoice! Just a few weeks ago, Rivian rolled out automated, hands-off driving for its second-gen R1 vehicles with a game-changing software update. Yet, the new feature, which is only operational on mapped highways, had left many fans craving for more.
Now the company, which prides itself on listening to - and delivering on - what its customers want, didn’t wait long to signal a ‘map-free’ upgrade will be available later this year.
“One feedback we’ve heard loud and clear is that customers love [Highway Assist] but they want to use it in more places,” James Philbin, Rivian VP of autonomy, said on the podcast RivianTrackr Hangouts. “So that’s something kind of exciting we’re working on, we’re calling it internally ‘Map Free’, that we’re targeting for later this year.”
The lag between the release of Highway Assist (HWA) and Map Free automated driving gives time for the fleet of Rivian vehicles to gather ‘unique events’. These events are used to train Rivian’s offline model in the cloud before data is distilled back to individual vehicles.
As Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe explained in early March, HWA marked the very beginning of an expanding automated-driving feature set, “going from highways to surface roads, to turn-by-turn.”
For now, HWA still requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road. The system will send alerts if you drift too long without paying attention. But stay tuned—eyes-off driving is set for 2026.
It’s also part of what Rivian calls its “Giving you your time back” philosophy, the first of three pillars supporting Rivian’s vision over the next three to five years. Philbin says that philosophy is focused on “meeting drivers where they are”, as opposed to chasing full automation in the way other automakers, such as Tesla’s robotaxi, might be doing.
“We recognize a lot of people buy Rivians to go on these adventures, to have these amazing trips. They want to drive, and we want to let them drive,” Philbin says. “But there’s a lot of other driving that’s very monotonous, very boring, like on the highway. There, giving you your time back is how we can give the best experience.”
This will also eventually lead to the third pillar of Rivian’s vision, which is delivering Level 4, or high-automation vehicles: Those will offer features such as auto park or auto valet, where you can get out of your Rivian at the office, or at the airport, and it goes off and parks itself.
While not promising anything, Philbin says he believes the current Gen 2 hardware and platforms should be able to support these upcoming features.
The second pillar for Rivian is its focus on active safety features, as the EV-maker rewrote its entire autonomous vehicle (AV) system for its Gen2 models. This focus allowed Rivian’s R1T to be the only large truck in North America to get a Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“I believe there’s a lot of innovation in the active safety space, in terms of making those features more capable and preventing more accidents,” Philbin says. “Really the goal, the north star goal, would be to have Rivian be one of the safest vehicles on the road, not only for the occupants but also for other road users.”

Read more