Don't fly over people until you watch this video!

i'm um i don't know what you think i don't know what you think so the the screws came out this could be this could be a big finding actually this could be a really big deal with the camera this time but oh yeah all right that's it no no question now that broke the prop oh that's that's that's a laceration [Music] so you want to fly over people well today is the day that the regulation changes and guess what this is already the most misunderstood regulation out there no you can't just fly over people anytime you want and this is what we're going to talk about in this video and if you're flying as a recreational pilot no you can't follow this regulation this is only for part 107. so if you have one of these drones right here then you're going to have to ask yourself a few questions the mini the mini is one of the most misunderstood now we have a bunch of minis in here because we're going to be doing some testing later on today but the mini in itself does not qualify to fly over people now you're going to say category 1 all of this we're going to get into the details of category 1. but i wanted to get this right out of the bat for the video if you have just a mini right now it is not going to be compatible now if you have a minion you have prob guards on it is it compatible can you fly over people anytime you want no and we'll talk about the details of that in a minute people have been saying what about my mavic air too this is a mavic air 2 right here what about my dji fpv what about my regular fpv drone right here can i fly over people we'll get into the details of this the short answer is no not at the moment so this new regulation about flying over people is great but there's a lot of buts behind it and you need to make sure that you really really understand the stuff so let's get to it so the first thing you're probably wondering about is what does the regulation actually say about flying over people now this is brand new this is starting april 21 of 2021 if you're actually watching this video on the day that it is going out this is the day that you can start flying over people but stop you do not fly over people anytime you want we've already said that in the introduction but i want to make this clear the faa came up with this classification of category one category two category three or category four drone your drone has to fall within category one two three or four before you can fly over people at the moment at the time i am recording this there is no category 2 or category 3 drawn that are approved by the faa on the market so you need to slow down and anytime we talk about cat 2 or cat 3 you need to remember make sure you check to see if somebody has come up with a category two or category three drone category one we're going to talk about it in a second because there is a few types a few types and the most popular one that you can think of do not fall into category one so at the moment as this is going live as you're watching it chances are you cannot fly over people just yet so let's get into this a little bit more and take a look at the categories now category four i'm going to already take it out of the picture this is for drones that have been approved by the faa with a very specific process i want you to think about category 4 as much larger drones that have specific maintenance somebody working on these drones think about maybe amazon doing their deliveries that's going to be our category 4 drone but category 1 2 or 3 are going to be important now there's a few things that we need to define first and the first one is the type of flying that you can do over people the fa doesn't just say okay go fly over people and that's it they actually have to divide this into different categories so the first thing is going to be sustain flight and then transitioning flight those are the two terms that are being used in the regulation and we're going to talk about what they actually mean the faa also has a term called open air assembly and we're going to define that tremor as well because you'll see it depending on the type of flying and over who is going to dip is going to change the type of requirement that you have now i can already see you looking at me and be like uh is this too complicated yes actually this is probably one of the most complex and complicated piece of regulation out there and that's also the reason why people don't really understand what is going on and the first definition we need to look at is sustained flight over people sustained flight is actually pretty simple it exactly what you're thinking about hovering on top of someone or moving vehicle that's going to be considered sustained flight now another thing that you may not think about is flying back and forth even though you're not standing directly always on top of someone if you have a large group of people for example and you go back and forth back and forth that's going to be considered sustained flight so when i mention sustained flight just remember these these few key terms the last one is circling when you're circling permanently over a group of people even if you're not always flying on top of them if you go on and off on and off still going to be considered sustained flight now you're going to say then what is not sustained flight well the other category is what the faa talks as transiting or transitioning between point a and point b and really what they want to see there is that you're going over people or maybe over moving vehicles and that you're not really this is not the intent of the flight if you want this is not the purpose of the flight the purpose let's say that you were for example doing a real estate shot and you have to go from one house to the next and you have to cross a busy highway well that's is not sustained flights that's just basically you're transiting between point a and point b now obviously if you're going to do this back and forth several times then at one point it becomes sustained so there is a very fine line between these two terms but this is important and the other term that's important is what the faa calls open air assembly and you're going to say well greg i'm sure it's defined somewhere in the regulation right well guess what it's not which means that open air assembly it is defined i shouldn't say that it is somewhat defined in here but it's one of these terms that the fa is going to look at it on a case by case basis if you remember the regulation from part 107 if you've studied part 107 at one point the face is partially populated area well what is a sparsely populated area guess what there's no real definition if you ask a hundred different pilots what sparsely populated different area you're going to get a hundred different answers and this is i feel is this is going to become kind of the same thing now the fa does provide some guideline and and the way that you should look at it is like this okay what is the density of people in a certain area let's say that you had you know 10 people right next to each other that are elbow to elbow and and in this environment this is probably not something that we see a lot right but um 10 people 15 people elbow to elbow in a pretty small area that's going to be an open air assembly if you have a beach in the middle of winter with two or three people on the beach that's not an open air assembly spring break on the beach that's an open air assembly right here because there's going to be a ton of people so you have to think about hey if there's a lot of people in one location that's going to be an open-air assembly the question we get all the time these days is what about a wedding well yeah a wedding is going to be considered an open-air assembly you get a lot of people here now in the regulation it does talk about the fact that if it's a public event with quite a few people it's pretty much automatically going to be an open-air assembly you have a parade for example you have a protest you have anything that's going to gather a lot of people you have a ball game going on a football game for high school for example that's going to be an open-air assembly so we'll talk about some examples in a minute when i'm done defining all the different categories i'm going to give you a whole lot of examples because i feel like this is how you're going to understand how this is going to work there's one more thing that i want to define is a vehicle and the faa is pretty actually direct about what an actual vehicle is and if they're basically saying that it's a mean of transportation regardless of whether it is motorized or not obviously a car or truck a bus anything of that nature is going to be a vehicle but a bicycle is also going to be a vehicle rollerblades you bet vehicle a surfboard whatever it is that is basically helping a human move is pretty much going to be considered a vehicle a train is also going to be considered a vehicle so all of these things you need to think about hey is it transporting humans with or without a motor it's pretty much a moving vehicle why is this important because the fa has slightly different roles when it comes to flying over moving vehicles and we'll get to that again in a second right here so you're probably asking what is category one two or three how do i know if my drone is a category one two or three let's take a look at the requirements for this and i wanted to really pay attention here because well because it's on you you're the pilot in command so when you fly over people you are making sure that you do have all of this equipment right here and again i said it before but i'm going to say it again this is only for part 1 7 pilots this is not available to a hobbyist so let's take a look at this first one the weight the weight limit for category 1 the category 1 has to be under 0.55 pounds which is 250 grams which means that everything attached to the drone and this is important has to be under 250 grams or 0.55 pounds for category 203 anything under 55 pounds is okay so in this case you know you can have larger drones and they'll fall under category two or three but category one is very restrictive with the amount of weight eligibility requirement for all of these categories two three one two or three you need to have no rotating parts that are creating laceration we'll get back to that in a second because we actually did some testing to find out well if props can actually create laceration so we'll get back to that in a second the next thing is the other requirement is for category two and category three they are kinetic energy requirements which means that uh a certain amount of energy created by the drone we have 11 foot pounds of kinetic energy for category 2 is the max and 25 foot pound of kinetic energy for category 3. we'll have a discussion about kinetic energy in a second just so you can have a better understanding and then we'll give you some numbers that we actually calculated and and give you a better picture of all of this the next one is probably one of the most important one but that people don't quite understand at this stage it's the paperwork from the fa the fa is going to have to approve these category drones at least for category two and three for category one you as the pilot in command are going to be the person deciding if the drone meets category one requirements and then you can go fly for category two or three you can't do that until the manufacturer of the drone is going to submit paperwork to the faa to say hey is this okay to fly over people and the fa is going to tell the manufacturer well you tell us what kind of testing have you done to make sure that this actually works and the manufacturer is going to come back and say well we've flown over people we've crashed one over and we've done this and this and this and this do you agree and are you okay with it at which point the faa says good to go rubber stamp now you are category two or three so at the moment i've mentioned this but i'm going to say it again there is no category two or three drawn as of april of 2021 that are approved by the fa it's going to be a while before we do so if you're asking is my mavic air 2 is my mavic 2 pro is my hotel evo 2 is my inspire 2 all approved for category 2 it's not okay not until dji and the faa says not until hotel and the faa do the work to get this approved i want to make this again very very clear and there's going to be a labeling requirement for category 1 you don't need to have a label but for category 2 and category 3 you're going to need to have a label that says that the drone is right here approved to fly as such all right we are going to be testing as our first test the mini this is the original mini and we put some regular props on it and what we're going to do is we're going to test it here what we have is we have our setup we have something that is actually skin like if you want human skin like we try to find something as close as we can and this is what we have so we have a small area that we can use and we're going to fly this into that area and we're going to see what type of laceration we have so let's get to it this little drone is a champ there's not much of a of a surface area unfortunately to hit i mean it's barely it's it feels like it's barely cutting the the skin let me do it a little faster dude i think did you see what it did it spun right back into the right direction oh finally you can see that one did break through the the fat the fat tissue yeah that that's that's fattier muscle tissue right there through that is through the skin layer i don't know no no i mean right i'm gonna use the tip of my knife because it's tiny right there yeah button right there oh that's a tough conclusion to get to let's do it one more time let's wait until that was a good impact that was an impact that folded the arm you see it folded the arm on the drone yeah i would oh that was that was beautiful and it's been easy i'd spend i don't know man i i swear like i'm not breaking skin at night i i've got a hard time saying that this is laceration let's uh let's land let's take a shot wow all right well tell you what let's uh carbon it up all right step number two we're going to try carbon fibers step number one was really not conclusive so i want to go back and i want to look at this footage a little bit closer but let's try step number two with the carbon props on the mini and then let's see what it actually does that was an impact as far as the aircraft is concerned which is weird because it hit really slowly was that too high i don't think so you want to go check real quick yeah it doesn't sound all that great [Music] oh that was it that broke the prop um i'm i don't know what you think i don't know what you think so the the the screws came out yeah both the props are fine i don't see any screws though all right carbon pop inconclusive all right we're going to try again the mini on a different piece of testing over there and then we're going to see what happens the first test was fairly inconclusive so i wanted to test this as many times as i can we went slowly we went fast and now we're going to do it again same normal propellers we're not going to do the carbon propellers they don't sound good the the airplane is not really all that stable so i don't really feel comfortable flying it with the carbon props on but just with the regular props we're gonna see what happens again so let's get to it yeah oh that was a good hit i don't think it can get any better than that oh that's that's much deeper yes that is much deeper then that was there yeah i'm looking at that well that's another one we haven't touched this one yet that was there no no no this one right here oh oh oh i see the cut now yeah yeah and right here there and there let's do that again because that's uh that's that's a much yeah much much deeper laceration now oh that was another good one i hit it right oh wow oh that's that's a that's a laceration okay well um yeah that that's a very very different result right here on the second pass hit it twice right on now we have lacerations and this is there's no question right now on the previous one when we ran it into it um it was really questionable you can barely see the skin i mean i would say you know if you ran your your hand on on top of concrete and then you come out and you get a little bit of of skin abrasion that's what it looked like now with this pass on the same test with the same drone at pretty much the same speed we've got a completely different result so we're gonna do it one more time and then see what we get out of that one well i pretty much hit it with the camera this time but oh that's okay though cause oh yeah all right that's it no no question now no no there's no question yeah there's no question all right well so when we talk about lacerations it's pretty clear it's pretty straightforward right here you do need prop guards to put on your drone so let's go back to the studio and do that so now because of the requirement to not have rotating parts that create laceration then for most drones we're going to have to have prop guards and you may ask what about this thing so this is a mini 2 with prop guards on it and with a battery well if you put all of this together then what you get is a drone that's almost 300 grams which means that it no longer qualifies as a category one now there's a little trick and the little trick comes from the back right here and if i take this battery out now this battery right here is a battery from japan the dji decided to release a drone in japan a mini drone in japan that was about 50 grams lighter than the one sold in the us and the way that they did it the drone in itself is actually the same thing the way that they did it is they actually used a smaller battery this battery is about 49 grams which is actually half of what the battery for the original mini is and so when you do that when you have this this this special battery right here then the entire drone now all of a sudden becomes a sub 250 gram drones with no rotating props that can cause laceration so this is the solution right here this as it sits right here with the battery in it with a card in it is about 246 gram which makes this a category one drone one of the very few in the us that can actually fly over people because of this little battery in here now you're going to say well where do i find this battery well to find this battery it's well it's painful it's painful because dji doesn't sell it in the us just yet i'm not sure that they ever will but at the moment it is not available for sale in the u.s so we had to go through hoops to get this thing here uh it took us actually buying an entire drone now you notice this it says 199 grams right here on the side that's because this is the japanese version of the mini 2 and uh and this thing is basically just ready to fly over people at the moment so unless you have one of these and then you have the smaller battery in the back at the moment your mini and your mini 2 do not qualify as category 1 which means you can't fly them over people legally now you're going to say what does all this mean when can i fly category 1 when can i fly category two three what is the actual regulation behind it what are the limitations well because it's complex we divided this into four different parts and the four different parts the first one is sustained flights over open air assembly remember we define these terms essentially you've got a concert a wedding a church function a concert or any large gatherings a marathon a fun run we have a car show if there is no moving vehicles there's a lot of people looking at cars you're going to fly over them that's an example right here we have a street fair we have a farmer's market that's also a open air assembly if you do sustain flights we have a news event a speech or protest something that is going on that gathers a lot of people you have a college campus a busy college campus with a lot of students that are coming out of class for example that's also going to be an example right here we have the beach on spring break where you have a ton of people for an event at the beach that's going to be considered open-air assembly you have anything if you do corporate videos and you want to fly over maybe let's say you wanted to do a picture of a large group of people in front of their building and you decide to fly right on top of them and hover so you can do the picture and show the the the size of all the employees or of the group of employees i should say you don't want to show the size of the employees that would be a sustained flight right here or a high school event with sports and you have people that are sitting and you want to fly over them and hover that is going to be another example right here of sustained flight so i hope this makes sense now if that's the case then what you need to do is you can only do it if you have a category one or two and you have remote id so that's probably not gonna happen in in the short amount of time in the next couple weeks maybe even months if you do it with a category three you can't actually because that's not allowed it's just it's an open air assembly you can't be over that the second type of operation over people that you can do is sustain flight over moving vehicles somebody riding a horse that's another example you go sustained flight over skateboarders at the park or let's say an off-road event like the baja event you have a race track with racing vehicles on there then that's going to be something where you need you're going to be doing sustained flight over moving vehicles you have a boat that is moving over the water that's going to be considered in here anything with watercraft really is going to be considered moving vehicles so you have to be paying attention there surfers kayaks canoes paddle boards you name it you have let's say that you had a road with a lot of traffic and you're doing sustained flight right on top of it then that's going to be considered in here a ski slope with a lot of skiers going down if you're going to be doing sustain flight again now so you're going to ask well what about all these examples what do you need well it doesn't matter one two or three you need to be in a restricted area and you need to be with people that are on notice now this is difficult if you have a busy highway how you do that you can't you cannot do sustained flight over a busy highway at the moment because it's not allowed by the regulation it needs to be a restricted area so you need to think about all these things when you start flying over moving vehicles the regulation changes completely and uh and you need to be aware of this part the third scenario that we have is sustain flight anywhere else if it's not over open air assembly if it's not over people so let's say maybe flying over one or two people in an area that you know the beach during the winter where there's not a whole lot of people and you can do that now can you do this right now with this drone absolutely this is the one thing that you can do with a category one drone that is under 250 grams you can basically fly over people anywhere else than the other things that we mentioned if you have a category 3 drone it gets a little bit more complicated you're going to have to be inside of a restricted area just like what we mentioned before for flying over a moving vehicle with people that are on notice or if you're not doing this then we can revert back to the old regulation which is you need to be people need to be inside of non-moving vehicles or they need to be under a covered structure like inside of a house or a little patio or something then in this case you can fly technically it's not really over them but but if they're inside of a non-moving vehicle then you're good to go to do that so that's the third category now the fourth one is basically the transitioning remember you go from point a to point b without really having the purpose of flying over moving vehicles or people then in this case yes you can do that you can even do it doing it over open air assembly without remote id and you can also do it over moving vehicle with a category one or two so this little thing right here i can theoretically fly over a highway that's a busy highway as long as my purpose is to go from point a to point b to get to where my mission is taking me um i can also do this over a concert maybe let's say that i'm shooting a house right here and i'm recording another house right here for a photo shoot and then i have to go over a parade or or a concert i know this sounds like very not something that would happen but in this case you would theoretically be allowed to do this now if you wanted to do this with a category 3 it gets a bit more complicated as you can see here in the in the cheat sheet that we're providing you yes you can do that but you have you cannot do it over open air assembly because you're not allowed to do this you cannot fly over open-air assembly at all with a category three and if you were to do it over moving vehicles you'd have to make sure that they are again in a restricted area and that they are on notice you're going to say why all the restrictions on category 3 well remember the category 3 drones are the ones that are going to cause the most damage 25 foot pound of kinetic energy so that's a lot of damage right there that can be basically if it looks like hey this is a pretty high risk if this thing falls it's going to hurt people so we want to make sure that they are over restricted area and make sure that the people out there know what's going on and that they're willing to take the risk of being under this larger drone that can create more damage so i know this is pretty confusing i know there are a lot of examples and a lot of different possibilities but please please please at the bottom right here we're going to put a link to a cheat sheet that you can print it's going to fit on one page and you can basically print this put it in your bag and you're flying back and refer to it when you need to fly over people or over moving vehicles and it's really when you start looking at this cheat sheet it is pretty straightforward because you need to just see are you falling in one of these four categories and if so what kind of drone do you have category one two or three and and then it will tell you what you need to do to be compliant but don't just go fly and and and disregard this regulation this is important the faa has decided to relax the rules a little bit in when it comes to flying over people and the last thing that we want to do is take advantage of this in the wrong way and and create additional regulation for the future when the fa says well this was a terrible idea we're going to go back to the way it was before so just just be aware of all these things in here now let's go ahead and go to the field now and take a look at what flying over people actually means and what what the fa meant with all of this a lot of people are asking what it is to fly over well over really with the fa means over json here part of the operation here's what we're going to do we have our mini 2 which has a prop guard which has a small battery which means that it is technically a category one drone so we're going to be flying on top of json and this is one of the operation that we can actually do so if we go right on top of this and just like this right here then that qualifies as over if i go forward it does not qualify as over because now the drone is not directly over json and really it is that simple this is what people have been getting confused over when the fa says flying over people flying over a moving vehicle as long as there is any part of the drone covering any part of the person just and please extend your arm if jason extends his arm to the side like this and i fly over the drone and i fly over jason over his arm i'm flying over jason okay and it really is that simple so what we're going to be doing is there's another thing that you need to consider as the drone is moving forward towards someone you may not be flying right on top of them but what happens if you lose the motors if the battery loses power if something detaches if a propeller breaks and the drone continues to move forward and then falls on the person well technically you can get in trouble for that as well so this is something to consider you may not be flying directly over the person but because of the moment because of the the the velocity of the drone then this is something that you have to consider that's what flying over actually means so let's move on to the next category all right kinetic energy kinetic energy is really just a fancy word for saying how much energy is this thing creating as it moves through the air and uh and really this is a number that we need to be paying attention to now we did we did a little bit of math and and we found some interesting stuff the mini 2 this is a mini 2 right here based on the speed at which it can fall or at which it can fly and based on its weight we find that an impact from this drone on someone is going to create about 26 foot pounds of kinetic energy and and this is a lot because if you remember 25 was the limit for a category 3 drone so this means surprisingly that this drone when it hits something or someone it generates 26 foot pound of kinetic energy now there is a way to go around this and the reason we did all of this math and the reason i'm talking about kinetic energy is because we need to prepare ourselves with what it's going to take to make a drone a category 2 drone or a category 3 drone and what it's going to take is a parachute if we look at data that's provided by some parachute manufacturers we're going to take this drone or a larger drone like a mavic air 2 or phantom 4 or an inspire and we're going to put a parachute on it and it's going to reduce dramatically the amount of kinetic energy that it can create when it impacts so mavic air 2 which weights 570 grams is going to generate about 80 foot pounds of kinetic energy without a parachute when you start putting a parachute on it it brings it closer to five five is very very respectable in this case a phantom four much much bigger 1.3 kilos 1.4 kilos that's going to generate over 1400 foot-pounds of kinetic energy without a parachute with the parachute we're down to about eight to nine foot-pound of kinetic energy so a big big difference and um and and what this really means the bottom line with what we found here is the fact that when you buy a category 2 or category 3 drone in the future essentially what you're going to buy is a drone that has a parachute attached to it there's really no other way around the regulation so for those of you that are asking when is my mavic air 2 going to be a category 2 drone well it's going to be a category 2 drone when the manufacturer says in order to comply with this regulation you need to put this kind of parachute on it and then it becomes a category two but at the moment this is not where we are i'm predicting the future right here i may be completely wrong uh but at the moment based on the research that we did it looks like to get a category two or three you're gonna need to have a a parachute installed on this drone which takes me to the conclusion and the conclusion is not really straightforward you you've seen the results that we got personally i think that this drone right here without prop guards creates lacerations that are not acceptable as per what the faa puts out which means that you need to put prop guards on your small dji mavic mini or any really other drone that's going to be very similar to this in order to comply with category one when you do that it's going to take it over the maximum weight allowed under category one which means that you need to be creative by having a smaller batteries or prop guards that are virtually weightless which is going to be very difficult so at the moment very difficult to say that this without prop guards counts as a category one drone category two category three at the moment we're recording this video not gonna happen until we have a parachute installed and we have the faa basically saying hey this is approved as a category 2 drone after dji hotel all the big manufacturers do a lot of homework with the fa so that's the conclusion that we have go out there and be safe if you decide if you decide that the conclusions from our video is that this drone without prop guard is safe if that's your conclusion and you decide to go and fly you're taking a risk and i want to make this very very clear if you decide to take that risk and you hit someone in the face you hit someone you hit somebody's baby and they decide to go after you and and these lacerations are enough that a judge looks at it and says yep you created lacerations you broke the regulation with the fa then it's going to cost you a lot of money your insurance if you have one is not going to cover what you did you at risk of losing everything that you own personally not something that's worth it so you need to be you need to be aware of what you're doing when you decide to fly you are the pilot in command who's going to decide whether this is legal with or without prop guards it's not me it's not anybody else it's you as the pilot in command that's going to say yes this meets the the regulation and the requirements personally i'm going to be flying this thing over people sometimes not all the time because there's still a risk and i'm going to be using the small battery that we got and that's really the only time that i'm going to do it because otherwise it doesn't meet the requirements so with that said get off my soapbox i hope this was insightful i know there was a lot of information in here but i didn't want to do just a short video because this is not what we do i wanted to do the research behind it and really explain the the thought process that we we got behind all of this so i hope you made it all the way to the end uh if you did leave a comment you probably already did you know i always tell my students any comments question rude remarks so leave them down here if you have even if you have rude remarks about what we did maybe you want to see more testing and we can do that we can go out and do more testing on the the piece of equipment that we got and and hopefully maybe find different uh different results i'm not sure but uh that's it for now subscribe like leave a comment and uh fly safe and i will see you next time you ready that's it but it is so much fun you

Channel: Pilot Institute

Views: 139,295

Keywords: drone news update, uas news update, drone news, uas news, part 107 test prep, part 107, how to become a part 107 commercial drone pilot, how to study for part 107 exam, how to fly your drone recreationally, improve drone skills, learn how to fly a drone, flying over people, drone flying over people, new regulation FAA, FAA flying over people, DJI mini flying over people, operation over people, part 107 flying over people, DJI Japenese Mini 2, japanese dji battery

Id: rUzfEHeWKnM

Length: 36min 13sec (2173 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/oodelay]

ITT: "experts" learning the most basic rule of flying

[u/WrinklyBlueBrain]

Can someone please give me a tl;dw? I have a Mavic mini - can I fly over people starting today? Or no because I don't have a remote transmitter or whatever?