{"id":6606,"date":"2018-09-12T10:48:31","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T13:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/?p=6606"},"modified":"2018-09-12T10:48:31","modified_gmt":"2018-09-12T13:48:31","slug":"a-kids-toy-drone-can-photograph-the-site-of-an-engineering-failure-a-personal-injury-or-a-traffic-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/12\/a-kids-toy-drone-can-photograph-the-site-of-an-engineering-failure-a-personal-injury-or-a-traffic-accident\/","title":{"rendered":"A kid’s toy drone can photograph the site of an engineering failure, a personal injury or a traffic accident"},"content":{"rendered":"

C’mon, really?<\/strong><\/span> It’s true<\/strong>, as I found out a few days ago during a meeting in Moncton.\u00a0 I was told about a small drone fitted with a camera that could take vertical, aerial photographs above the site of an engineering failure, a slip and fall accident or a traffic accident and do this within Transport Canada’s regulations.\u00a0 For that matter, the site of any personal injury.<\/p>\n

I was at a meeting of CATAIR, the Canadian Association of Technical Accident Investigators and Reconstructionists.<\/p>\n

Transport Canada’s strict regulations considers any drone weighing less than 250 grams a toy.\u00a0 The Zerotech Dobby Pocket Selfie<\/em> drone weighs 219 grams fitted with a battery and a 4K HD camera and costs about $350 Cdn – just a toy.\u00a0 For a look-see and demonstration, Google\u00a0ZEROTECH Dobby Pocket Selfie Drone FPV With 4K HD Camera\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I can imagine carrying one of these around – almost in your pocket – during a visual assessment of a site like<\/span><\/strong> we carry a carpenter’s tape<\/span><\/strong> now.\u00a0 Maybe they’ll be standard issue in the future in the tool kit of forensic engineers, civil litigation lawyers, claims managers and others concerned with a site that has a problem.<\/p>\n

The kid’s toy Dobby drone doesn’t take good quality aerial video, which I rely on during my forensic investigations – it’s not fitted with a gimbal<\/em> –\u00a0 but it does take inexpensive vertical photographs quickly.\u00a0 These would be photographs a little like those we engineers used to take of a site from the raised bucket of an excavator or a boom truck.<\/p>\n

(A\u00a0gimbal<\/em>\u00a0is a device that keeps a camera level and minimizes vibration.\u00a0 The basic device has been known for centuries – but it’s not on the toy Dobby because it increases the weight and cost)<\/p>\n

Frame grabs of single photographs of the ground from good quality aerial video are easy to get like those from a toy drone but aerial video takes more time to organize and process and is more expensive.<\/p>\n

I plan to compare the quality<\/strong> <\/span>of vertical photographs taken with a toy drone of a site I’m investigating now to that of a frame grab from an aerial video.\u00a0 I’ll wait till the leaves fall from the tree-covered site so we can see the ground better.\u00a0 I’ll let you know how they compare..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

C’mon, really? It’s true, as I found out a few days ago during a meeting in Moncton.\u00a0 I was told about a small drone fitted with a camera that could take vertical, aerial photographs above the site of an engineering … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6606"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6606"}],"version-history":[{"count":42,"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6651,"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6606\/revisions\/6651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ericjorden.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}