3 points and To Count (if you know, you know) and definitely cake fine time
Police drone plunged 70ft into pond after operator mashed pop-up that was actually the emergency cut-out button
A police drone operator managed to switch his craft off mid-flight, dropping it squarely into a pond while attempting to search for a missing person. The blunder happened after the hapless operator of the Aeryon Skyranger R60 accidentally button-mashed the drone's "emergency cut-out function icon". According to the Air …
COMMENTS
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 10:52 GMT Clive Galway
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
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 14:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Fail safe?
Yeah I can well imagine situations where that would be required, though as others have said perhaps with a more obvious icon or something. To my mind this comes down to a training failure. Lesson number 1 for anything like this should always be "In the worst case scenario x,y,z can happen, this is how to handle it"... only then do you go on to things like normal flight etc, so then before even getting into the air the pilot would know what that button does, and hopefully what that error meant.
It's no different to any other potentially dangerous activity. If you go rifle shooting for instance the first things you're taught are the safety rules, what to do if a ceasefire is called etc, BEFORE you get your hands on a rifle.
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Thursday 21st January 2021 10:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Fail safe?
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
Hmm, sounds like a Boeing excuse. If the craft isn't reliable and fault-tolerant, it shouldn't be flying 20m up over peoples' heads.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 13:17 GMT Mike 137
Re: Fail safe?
This wasn't an avionics failure (the cut-out did exactly what it was supposed to do) - it was an ergonomics failure.
'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."'
I would have implemented this as a physical red button under a bright yellow flip up cover with a black exclamation mark on it, accompanied by a clear warning label about the hazards of use in flight.
As is increasingly common, the human interface designers failed to consider the situations in which their products are used or the clarity of communication between them and the user. Everything's an 'app' regardless of its criticality.
There's well over half a century now of solid research into human interface usability, but the pity is that the current crop of designers don't bother to read it up (even supposing they know it exists).
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 14:32 GMT Nick Ryan
Re: Fail safe?
Ok, bad use of terminology. I meant avaition/flying a whole rather than any specific part of it.
And as for human interface usability... most of the current crop of designers seem to have absolutely no clue. It's all about using the latest fad tools to create the latest interface and nothing else seems to matter - usability, accessibility or longevity.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 17:38 GMT J.G.Harston
Re: Fail safe?
In particular, windows that pop up or scroll onto the screen, just into place where your finger is milliseconds away from pressing the button you *had* targetted, so "open fire" is hit instead.
I almost shut down our sever the other day as something popped up over the start button as I was preparing to press 'log out' and 'shut down' scrolled under the pointer. Luckily it then said: This is odd, are you really sure you want to SHUT DOWN THE SERVER!?! Doubly lucky I was aware enough to avoid justbloodyclickdoitclickclickargghh!!!
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 21:15 GMT cdrcat
Re: Fail safe?
Buttons that don’t click when you press them are a horrendous UI failure. You see the problem with slow user interfaces - people naturally click again and the second click can be on something behind a modal - fail.
You can fade-in the button, or grey out the button while it is disabled, but those solutions also lead to unwanted side-effects.
Pop up modals and unexpected scrolling are hard problems (on Android Chrome double clicking an input box selects, but the first click pops up the keyboard and scrolls the input box away, very annoying!)
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 22:09 GMT Danny 2
Re: Fail safe?
@Nick Ryan -"The history of avionics is full of post-event learning experiences."
I was just reading about Tunnock's Teacakes / Munchmallows and found this gem in Wikipedia -
Retired RAF bomber pilot Tony Cunnane told of how Tunnock's Teacakes became a favourite ration snack of the V bomber nuclear deterrent flight crews based at RAF Gaydon, especially after discovering that they expanded at high altitude. This ended after one was left unwrapped and exploded on the instrument panel.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 12:36 GMT Alan J. Wylie
Re: Fail safe?
It reminds me of the emergency stop button on Multi Wheel Journal Grinders that I used to work on.
(I was out in Cleveland for 10 weeks in the late 80s installing one of the three shown in the photo in the above link).
There were, IIRC, 9 large grinding wheels for finishing the journals and oil seal on a Ford V8 crankshaft. If the emergency stop was hit just as the cut started, power was removed from the motor rotating the crankshaft, the inertia in the grinding wheels would start spinning it backwards faster than it was ever meant to turn, it would pop out of its head/tailstocks, be thrown into the bed of the machine, shatter, and the pieces bounce out at high speed..
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 13:44 GMT Androgynous Cupboard
Re: Fail safe?
So it's called emergency stop because when you stop it, it creates an emergency? Wel, I suppose it's not like they didn't warn you. Reminds me of this far side cartoon
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Wednesday 20th January 2021 11:24 GMT Cuddles
Re: Fail safe?
Exactly. The whole point of an emergency shut off is that it simply shuts everything off, no questions asked. You can have all kinds of clever systems that try to handle things in a controlled manner before things get that bad, but once you hit the big red button you need to know that it will do exactly what it is supposed to. As soon as you interpose more checks in between the killswitch and the actual killing, you no longer have a killswitch at all.
The problem in this case isn't that the killswitch exists, but that it's not actually a big red button. In case of an emergency it seems to be far too faffy and slow to activate reliably in hurry. But at the same time it's nowhere near obvious enough to avoid being done accidentally*. The reason people talk about big red buttons is that it usually really is a big red button - even if you're not trained on a system and don't know exactly what pressing it will do, it's very clear that it's something important that you probably shouldn't be pressing just to find out what it does, and if something goes horribly wrong and you don't know what to do, that's probably a good start. Something that needs serious training just to be able to recognise what the button looks like and how to press it is just terrible design from every direction.
*Obviously there are plenty of stories here under the "Who, me?" heading about people bumping into buttons without even noticing they're there, but placement of physical switches is a different kind of design problem. The point being addressed here is rather about knowing what a button does and how to use it given that you're already at least somewhat aware that some controls are present.
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Wednesday 20th January 2021 11:36 GMT Terry 6
Re: Fail safe?
iow there is a reason why the button that's inside a red box with a glass cover and a line that says "In case of emergency break glass" is inside a red box with a glass cover and a line that says "In case of emergency break glass".
The red box may not be possible, but the reason for it remains.
Ditto the big red lever with a pin holding it in place and a sign saying "In case of emergency....etc"
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Wednesday 20th January 2021 12:12 GMT Nick Ryan
Re: Fail safe?
Depending on the danger I've found them to usually be a bright yellow flip lid with a clearly visible red push button underneath or just a clearly visible red push button (usually where one needs to stop something immediately and any form of delay is a bad thing. These are basic standards and easily understandable.... except for the perpetrators of the "who me?" stories of course.
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Monday 25th January 2021 10:12 GMT SuperGeek
Re: Fail safe?
"Are you sure you want to engage emergency stop?"
Tap "Yes"
"Are you definitely sure you want to engage emergency stop?"
Tap "Hell Yes! Do it!"
"Are you REALLY ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY sure you want to engage emergency stop??"
Tap "For FUCK'S SAKE...Yes!" button.
Good UI design works wonders to help avoid a drone bath! Not so much to avoid an accident though!
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 11:58 GMT Brewster's Angle Grinder
Re: Do Thales make police drones too?
It was aquabraking, not lithobraking. And I don't know how big the pond was,* but if it was the back garden variety then the operator had a pretty good aim and the military should higher them.
*I've googled it, and it's bigger than a cul-de-sac. This is where too much information spoils a joke.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 14:34 GMT Nick Ryan
Re: Do Thales make police drones too?
I'm sorry. Please restate your reply using officially support units.
We have standards to keep round here...
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 10:47 GMT Clive Galway
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)
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 15:03 GMT Steve 53
I looked at the famous "Derby police peak district drone shaming" and cringed a bit after taking my A2 CofC, the shot taken above a car with people getting in and out made me wonder if there is an Article 241 question there... Could easily have derisked the shot by taking it from a 60 degree angle rather than 90.
Doesn't feel like they're doing appropriate risk assessments
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 10:50 GMT Danny 2
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.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 12:17 GMT Brewster's Angle Grinder
Look at that thing in the sky! *thwack*
"I'd still rather a drone fell on me than a helicopter."
If you're dead, you're dead. It doesn't matter if it was a 13kg drone or a 11 tonne chinook that did it.
And drones are demonstrably more likely to drop out the sky - because the pilots have less training, easy access to a kill switch, and aren't sitting in the beast putting their life on the line.
And because drones are cheap, we're likely to see far more deployed far more often. So overall, the risk to bystanders from drones, while small, will probably end up greater than the risk from helicopters.That said, drones will probably still be safer overall - because when a helicopter crashes, there are guaranteed humans in the accident.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 16:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Look at that thing in the sky! *thwack*
Actually aviation safety embodies an energy concept in a lot of it's planning. Small light aircraft crashing do less damage than heavy fast ones, and hat's reflected in the quantum of regulation. Single seat microlights are unregulated, big fast jets are very regulated. And while a 35kg drone on your head from 10 giraffes is likely to spoil your day, it's not going to more than one person at a time (and yes, obviously, you could be driving an open topped lorry full of kittens and veer into a petrol station with an attached orphanage). A Chinook can spoil a lot of people's days.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 23:02 GMT The Oncoming Scorn
Re: Look at that thing in the sky! *thwack*
FORD: That’s the way it’s looking. Perhaps we should just ask them if they want it back. You know, if we were reasonably polite about it -
ZAPHOD: They might just let us off with being lightly killed.
FORD: Yeah, well, at least it’s better than, ooh, than er…
ZAPHOD: It isn’t better than anything at all, is it?!
FORD: Er, no.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 12:26 GMT Alister
Re: Won't somebody think of the ducklings?
And as a tax-payer (?) I'd rather pay for a drone over a cop-ter.
As was pointed out to you in the previous discussion, there are things that a helicopter can do which a drone can't - as one example, following and recording a high-speed pursuit on a motorway - and as most police services already have a helicopter, why not use it to its best advantage?
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 10:59 GMT James Ashton
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.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 11:17 GMT Robin Bradshaw
Re: Touch screen emergency shut off?
Given that the whole world has been trained to click the piss off button on any popup (we use cookies/gdpr/use the app instead etc etc) that gets in the way like they were some kind of demented pigeon, so they can do what they were trying to do, even multiple clicks is not safe.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 15:55 GMT ChrisC
Re: Touch screen emergency shut off?
And especially not multiple clicks in the same position. Double bonus points if you design your UI like that when the system has a laggy UI which doesn't give the user immediate feedback that they've tapped/clicked the button the first time, so they then press it again because they think their first attempt hadn't even registered at all...
Can't remember what system it was that caught me out with this many moons ago, but that one single experience has made me utterly ruthless about requiring any UI designs I work on myself to not do stupid stuff like this - the user MUST get immediate feedback that their input has been recognised even if the system isn't ready to process that input just yet, and any destructive action MUST require at least two physically seperate actions to avoid "double click disaster" scenarios.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 17:03 GMT DJV
Re: Touch screen emergency shut off?
Reminds me of one of my favourite Gary Larson cartoons - "Wings stay on, Wings fall off" one:
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 11:20 GMT Vulch
Re: Touch screen emergency shut off?
Many years ago I had a removeable pack disc drive that would pick three questions from a pool of around six to make sure you really wanted to format a pack. Half the questions in the pool needed an answer of "No" rather than "Yes" so just clicking the "Yes" button three times usually wouldn't work.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 12:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Touch screen emergency shut off?
Our mainframe operator's console was plagued by the repeated affirmative response to a destructive series of prompts - so we inverted the last one. A tactic then used for the next 40 years for any destructive confirmation. My maxim has always been "avoid burning your bridges".
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 18:15 GMT Stoneshop
Re: Touch screen emergency shut off?
The storage arrays that we were responsible for half a decade back required actually typing "YES" into a dialog field, twice, if you were about to initiate some irreversible and destructive action.
I'd have phrased the second question so that you'd have to answer "NO" to proceed, but as it was it was already pretty well guarded against inadvertent zapping.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 12:50 GMT Sgt_Oddball
Re: Touch screen emergency shut off?
Taking three taps... that implies the UI dev has never rage clicked ANYTHING to make it just go away...
Having a modal window on something that could cut the power shouldn't be possible and if it's blocking what a user is focusing on (like the video feed for example) it should never block that as the user can and will put a biblical amount of effort in getting rid of the popup as soon as humanly possible so they can get back to concentrating on the task at hand.
A much better way would be some flashing indicator elsewhere on the screen that requires interaction to open it, implying the user is ready to view the message. Even then it should not obscure the main video feed.
As noted by others, the best option for a full blown cut out is a physical switch behind a molly-guard of some sort. The sort that requires actual intent rather than just finger mashing.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 11:20 GMT Version 1.0
Re: Touch screen emergency shut off?
The lack of a well designed emergency switch is not that far from the lack of a decently designed database that loses data. This is how we do things these days. I'm sure someone is going to release a drone app update to "fix" this problem in a week or twelve.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 12:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Touch screen emergency shut off?
Good luck getting them to add a physical button to an iPad app, because god forbid anyone make a drone that uses and actual physical controller these days.
I'd put a fiver on the Emergency Stop icon being in the bottom left or right of the screen, exactly where the base of your thumb would occasionally rest as you try to wrangle a pair of "virtual joysticks" to steer the thing.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 22:42 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Touch screen emergency shut off?
"Good luck getting them to add a physical button to an iPad app, because god forbid anyone make a drone that uses and actual physical controller these days.""
I really hope a pro-grade drone used on official Police business has a proper, dedicated controller does not require the officers smart phone be mounted into a cradle to operate it.
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Wednesday 20th January 2021 10:41 GMT KBeee
Re: Touch screen emergency shut off?
A few years ago a colleague of mine bought a quite expensive drone, and being concientious took it down to a deserted beach early in the morning to practice flying it. Inevitably within seconds he'd crashed it into the sea. Putting his iphone down on a rock he waded out to retrieve the drone. Returning to shore he found a wave had washed his phone away. I'd call that 2 for 2.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 15:47 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: Touch screen emergency shut off?
F35 avionics:
Are you sure you want to eject?
Enter the last three digits of the aircraft serial number to confirm eject
Please wait 60seconds before retrying eject
A confirmation email has been sent to your account, click on the link to confirm the eject
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 11:52 GMT Grease Monkey
Yes the pilot was a dick.
The force and the CAA are also dicks for allowing pilots to fly after only two hours training.
And the manufacturer is a dick having an emergency cutout that will simply drop a flying drone out of the sky with potentially fatal consequences.
Sounds like a perfect storm of dickery.
However the biggest failure here is definitely with the CAA. Their regulation is clearly inadequate. I wonder if they are going to revisit their regulations following this or wait until somebody is killed or seriously injured as a result of such lax legislation. The answer is probably neither as their response to this event will probably be of the "nobody died nobody got pregnant" ilk. Then of course if somebody is killed in a similar even later changing the regulations then would be seen as an admission of liability so they wouldn't do it for fear of financial consequences.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 12:15 GMT Clive Galway
> And the manufacturer is a dick having an emergency cutout that will simply drop a flying drone out of the sky with potentially fatal consequences
Not at all - this would be preferable to allowing an out-of-control drone to keep going, where it could hit an aircraft and kill hundreds. Your criticism assumes a flight controller (The motherboard of the drone) which is infallible - ie it always knows exactly what it's current state is and can override the instructions of the operator. It's better to have a human decide if it's safer to kill all motors and let it plummet rather than fly off into the distance. After all, he skipped THREE WARNINGS, so the fault is 100% with the operator, not the manufacturer
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 12:41 GMT Greybearded old scrote
Three warnings that consisted of an obscure icon, which probably meant something to the designer only.
We're all tempted to shout PEBCAK at times, but I prefer the attitude promoted by Donald Norman. It's rarely the fault of the user.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 14:38 GMT Cynic_999
I question whether a cutout switch is needed at all - surely the normal powerdown sequence (that you use after landing) is perfectly adequate for that purpose? On quadcopters I have flown this consists of reducing the throttle to zero, followed by putting the controls in a specific position for a second or so (e.g. right stick in bottom left corner and left stick in bottom right corner). It would rarely if ever be needed during flight - the "emergency" button/switch usually has one of the following functions: "stop and hold position," "return home" or "Descend and land immediately".
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 14:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
That only works if all your sensors are reading correctly. An emergency cutout is designed to deal with the situation where the drone thinks it is level and stationary but is actually ascending, or traveling at quite some speed. It is a step that would normally be used only after other procedures for a normal power down and landing have been followed.
The problem here is not that an emergency cut out exists, but that it is too easy to trigger without the operator knowing what they were doing, however, it does need to be something that can be done quickly, because drones can go pretty fast, especially when their sensors fail.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 14:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Air law applies to police operators of "full size" aircraft in the same way as other aircraft. There are exemptions in air law for aerial work, and police aircraft are doing that, but there are no specific exemptions that say "the police don't have to follow CAA laws".
I imagine that the CAA takes the same view of drone regulation, that the police are just aircraft operators involved in aerial work, the same as people operating drones for surveying, photography, crop dusting etc. Hopefully the result will be much stricter requirements for drone operators engaged in aerial work (as opposed to recreational flying away from other people).
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 16:26 GMT ChrisC
I suspect there are some caveats/exemptions to that, given that a) most/all helicopters have areas on their height/velocity diagrams within which it would be difficult/impossible to recover from in the event of a total loss of engine power, b) for some military aircraft, the best pilots in the world aren't going to be able to fly, let alone land them if all power is lost (where "all power" includes the electrical supplies needed to maintain the FBW controls and the flight computers), and c) in some other power loss scenarios not covered by the above, "landing" may well need to be prefixed with "crash" in order to correctly describe the outcome of the aircraft returning to earth, as opposed to the rather more benign return that might be assumed/implied by the use of the word "landing" alone...
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 12:43 GMT Nick Ryan
As I read it, it did. It required three taps on a particular icon followed by confirmation in a popup. That's not entirely unreasonable as there is an important balance between really wanting to shut something down in a hurry and preventing accidental shut downs. Maybe it needs to be amended to make it more obvious and to prevent the "pigeon peck" scenario that was comically mentioned above where closing annoying popups has become a standard reaction.
A physical, separate emergency cut off that's easily reachable has been standard in industrial control systems for many years for good resaon.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 14:14 GMT Terry 6
Americans are consistent. It'd be lbs and feet.
In the UK we mix the measurements any old way.
Our petrol is priced in ltrs but our consumption measured in miles per gallon.
We weigh ourselves in Stones and lbs but our sugar and flour in Kgs and our recipes in either.
We measure distances commonly in Km - unless we don't, except on official road signs - always miles and yards, and Satnav can be either and may even use decimals of miles- or fractions of miles or possibly miles and yards or feet.
We even combine them. More than once I've heard the likes of " it's 5cm over 3ft".
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 19:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
" three metres of 2-by-four timber."
Building a new display table I ordered up some 38mmx65mm timber and a sheet of hardwood ply from Wickes. The nominal sizes seemed exactly what I wanted for an 8'x4' table without further cutting etc.
The ply was 2440mm long (viz 8 feet) - but the timber was a metric equivalent at only 2400mm. Fortunately using staggered butt joints allowed the base structure length to be increased to 2400+35 (came out nicely at 2440mm). It was only when fitting the ply that I discovered the base timber lengths were themselves different from each other by a few mm. I had naively assumed such things are cut in a standard jig. No one else will notice it isn't a perfect rectangle.
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Wednesday 20th January 2021 04:30 GMT Black Betty
Full size sheets are still imperial for a reason.
It allows for them to be cut down to smaller sizes while allowing for the saw kerf.
OTOH pre-cut stick lumber is is cut 'accurately' to length because the machinery that does the cutting is now fully automated and PHBs are cheap bastards. If you want 'overs' buy full (6m) lengths and have it cut to your specifications.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 23:24 GMT John Brown (no body)
"We measure distances commonly in Km - unless we don't, except on official road signs - always miles and yards,"
Just to confuse things eve further, the 3-2-1 exit markers on dual carriageways and motorways indicate 100s of metres to the exit. Some road warning signs are in meters, others in yards, but at least are indicated as such with the m and yds designations. Same applies to roadworks signs. I've even seen road works signs indicating works in 800yds followed by the next one showing 400m!!
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 14:05 GMT Potemkine!
There may be sometimes a difference between intent and usage
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 23:29 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: This is why…
That's an interesting quote. An object of similar weight could be a cannon ball or a very large bag of feathers. Aerodynamic shape is very relevant in a statement like that. Maybe they should re-run their tests with something of similar mass and shape, such as, I dunno, maybe a Skyranger drone?
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 19:04 GMT jake
How to scare people, lesson one:
"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."
Yeah, but needle-sharp 3.5kg iridium spikes don't often fall point-down [o|i]nto people wearing hardhats. Not in my experience, anyway.
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Thursday 21st January 2021 17:34 GMT whitepines
Re: How to scare people, lesson one:
Does an unpowered drone fall with the passively rotating blades giving some compensating lift like an autogiro?
Considering a quadcopter has zero static stability, relying only on the flight computer and powered blades to stay upright, the most likely outcome is a tumbling drone falling much like a plastic brick of similar size and weight.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 23:32 GMT John Brown (no body)
Most organisations such as Police or military are usually quite strict about only giving tasks or equipment to people who have completed the relevant training course(s) and are certified. How good the training is and whether the certification is actually meaningful is a different hovercraft full of eels.
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Tuesday 19th January 2021 23:09 GMT The Oncoming Scorn
Not Only But Also
I missed out on a offshore trip (Icon), part of which would have been learning to operate a ROV (Submersible), thanks to having my wisdom teeth out I couldn't go, my colleague did go, managed to sink\lose it (They did recover it). He received so much stick, he quit the job.
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Monday 25th January 2021 14:58 GMT j.bourne
Pop-up UI failure
Here's the real reason "an unfamiliar warning popped up on its flight controller." Popped up being the words of note. It's not clear that this popped up 'over' some other button (the emergency cut-off) but if that is what happened then there's your culprit - a UI designer that allows critical flight controls to be covered up by a pop-up 'warning'. Why a pop-up - why not a fixed message window on the screen? Why a screen in the first place: why not physical controls for the critical flight controls?
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Monday 25th January 2021 18:39 GMT CRConrad
Re: Pop-up UI failure
It's not clear that this popped up 'over' some other button (the emergency cut-off)
Not quite clear on your meaning: I don't think it popped up over the emergency cut-off; as I read it, it was the emergency cut-off that popped up. Apparently, it was big enough to pop up over most of the screen.Why a pop-up - why not a fixed message window on the screen? Why a screen in the first place: why not physical controls for the critical flight controls?
Because the cheap bastards don't deliver a physical control unit at all: The interface is a smartphone app.
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