Small consumer drones unlikely to cause severe head injury, study on dummies concludes
The study on three Chinese-made drones focused solely on head trauma and didn’t assess the potential for rotor blades cutting the skin or other injuries
The small drones flooding the commercial market are unlikely to cause severe head injuries if they fall out of the sky and strike people, a new study has concluded.
The results are similar to findings earlier this year by researchers associated with the Federal Aviation Administration and offer more justification for opening the door to unmanned operations over crowds.
Researchers at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, the site of an FAA-sanctioned drone testing facility, concluded that the risks of a catastrophic head injury were less than 5 per cent in an impact with a 1.2-kilogram unmanned vehicle, according to results published in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering. Larger drones create higher risks of injury, which may limit their uses until other safety standards can be devised, the study found.
“Risk of injury was observed to increase with increasing UAS mass, and the larger models tested are not safe for operations over people in their current form,” the researchers, led by biomechanical professor Steven Rowson, said in the journal article, referring to drones as unmanned aircraft systems.
The risks of a head injury are also greater if a drone falls on a person than if it runs into them while flying, they concluded.
Because the FAA defined small drones with the lowest level of oversight as weighing as much as 25 kilograms, the agency may want to reclassify its guidelines to restrict the heavier ones from flying over people, the authors said.