[DRONES BUZZING]
JUSTIN EDWARDS: Just basically getting a bird's eye view--
it's neat to see what birds see.
Everybody has three questions.
They say, how high does it go?
And then how much does it cost?
And then the third one is, where do I get one?
BRIAN ANDERSON: Justin Edwards is a drone hobbyist in Texas
who uses a hexacopter to shoot music and real estate videos.
But he's also been ensnared in a new kind of drone war.
JUSTIN EDWARDS: People hear drone--
it's just a hot button topic right now.
BRIAN ANDERSON: Drone technology has rapidly
advanced in recent years, putting small unmanned
vehicles with cameras in the hands of anyone for a few
hundred dollars.
They range in size from quadcopter toys to heavy duty
hexacopters to planes that can fly quietly in places that
conventional aircraft never could.
JUSTIN EDWARDS: I think because people are calling
them "drones" instead of remote control helicopters or
toys, they're getting a lot more traction.
But at the end of the day, this stuff is just remote
control helicopters.
BRIAN ANDERSON: These civilian drones are being used to
monitor crops and pollution, fight fires, conduct search
and rescue, make amazing films, and
just for sheer thrills--
all benefits that drone pilots are worried could be lost to
drone fear.
NICOLIA L. WILES: You can use one of these very personal sub
$700 units to actually save human life.
COLIN GUINN: I think there's a lot of really great things
people are doing with these, like fire research, search and
rescue, power line inspection.
BUDDY GARCIA: You're not going to put these areas of
technology into a convenient box and hope they go away.
My feeling is that it will continue to be a matter of
what you do with that data and being able to responsibly
track the users of this technology that will make the
difference.
BRIAN ANDERSON: Buddy Garcia is a long time Texas political
consultant who's now lobbying on behalf
of the drone industry.
His client is DJI, a China- and Austin-based drone
manufacturer that sells a number of systems.
Its most popular is the Phantom, a slick, out of the
box machine that runs for about $700.
BUDDY GARCIA: Here, in Texas, by taking this issue on and
maybe by discussing these issues, maybe we can become a
template for the rest of the country in trying to decide
how to approach this.
[CROWD YELLING]
-No!
-What just happened?
-The prop nut probably wasn't screwed on tight enough,
because I saw the prop.
BRIAN ANDERSON: Safety is another concern.
Even with a raft of safety features, small robots flying
above can succumb to weather or malfunction, just like any
other aircraft.
And the potential for thousands of these drones
crowding the airways will present problems for regular
airplanes, too.
For now, the Federal Aviation Administration restricts
drones to under 400 feet and polices their use by
commercial or government pilots.
But it won't release new regulations for civilian
drones until 2015.
COLIN GUINN: To send that market and that industry and
all that investment money to other states that are more UAV
friendly would be a shame for Texas.
BRIAN ANDERSON: In the meantime, hobbyists like
Justin will continue to fly under the radar as the debate
over drones rages on.
JUSTIN EDWARDS: There's a lot of people really thinking
about ways to use this stuff commercially
once it becomes legal.
So I think this could possibly be a pretty big industry.
BRIAN ANDERSON: And with drones becoming cheaper and
easier to operate, advances in technology will give rise to a
new generation of drone pilots.
[MUSIC PLAYING]