With drones, as with most things, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. That’s a principal finding of a report by the FAA’s Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE), which involved 23 universities flinging drones at crash test dummies. The report uses a lot of academic energy to say that bigger, faster drones are more likely to hurt people than small ones and the biggest risk comes from being cut by the propellers. So, the report recommends propeller guards be installed on drones. “Not only do blade guards limit the risk of serious laceration injury, they add flat plate drag area and reduce the aircraft’s terminal velocity,” the report notes.
This is the first of many studies the FAA will lead into the risks that drones pose. In this case, the general question posed was what happens when a drone falls into a crowd. In addition to the insights gathered on the effects of rapidly spinning sharp propeller blades on human flesh, the researchers decided that a falling DJI Phantom 3 had an 11 to 13 percent chance of causing a neck injury. Next up will be a study on airborne collisions.
