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 percent in an impact with a 2.6-pound 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 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 defines small drones as weighing as much as 55 pounds, the agency may want to reclassify its guidelines to restrict the heavier ones from flying over people, the authors said.
The study focused solely on head trauma and didn’t assess the potential for rotor blades cutting the skin or other injuries.
The Virginia Tech study looked at three models made by China-based SZ DJI Technology Co. The smallest was the Phantom 3, which was flown straight into a crash-test dummy’s head and also dropped on the dummy to simulate falling from the sky.
While the risks from the Phantom 3 were minimal, the potential for injury increased dramatically as drones weighed more. A DJI S1000+ model, an eight-rotor copter weighing 24 pounds, had an injury risk of about 70 percent in some tests.
Source: Portland Press Herald