First-person drone tourism will let you see the sights from

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First-person drone tourism will let you see the sights from

Post by Nipuna » Fri Jun 05, 2015 9:50 am

(Image: Giovanni Simeone/SIME)
(Image: Giovanni Simeone/SIME)
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EVERY year, hundreds of thousands of tourists visit the Valley of the Temples, a large park of Greek ruins situated on the south-west coast of Sicily. But soon you could be able to get a drone's-eye view of the sights.

Helmut Hlavacs at the University of Vienna has developed a system that allows people to control a drone as it visits faraway sites. The budding tourist sits at home, wearing a pair of virtual reality goggles. As they move their head, they direct a drone that has cameras pointed in all directions, feeding the view back to the user.

"From a flight, you could get a very good impression of the site, things you would not normally be able to see if you were walking through the ruins," says Antonio Gentile, founder of InformAmuse, an archaeology app start-up and one of the researchers who has teamed up with Hlavacs.

So far, Hlavacs has only tested his system locally, in an open field and on a narrow city street. He plans on making the software work over long distances; if there is too much of a lag between the drone and the goggles, the wearer is likely to become nauseated. His latest progress was presented at a drone network workshop in Florence, Italy, last month.

Hlavacs believes that drones can serve as a cheap, low-stress, environmentally friendly form of tourism. He estimates he is about a year away from a version that could be used by the public.

"All around the world, people could join in if they wanted and hire a drone," he says. "One big aspect of this is inclusion: for people who can't afford to travel, people with disabilities, people who for some reason aren't able to spend the time."

Drones are already making tourism inroads. Videos shot by drones in far-flung places are popular online. On one site, Travel By Drone, people can watch pre-recorded videos filmed in places as far afield as Mongolia, Mexico City and Chernobyl.

Preston Ward, who works at the site, thinks livestreaming will be more popular. "It's fascinating to see what happens next," he says. "I think it's hard to conceptualise what the impact will be."

Still, there are practical kinks to iron out. Flying drones in crowded areas can be dangerous: last year one fell and injured a runner during an Australian triathlon. Adding a fail-safe system and rotor guards could help.

Hlavacs also thinks tourist sites might allow drones to fly only when in-person visitors aren't present. And then there are regulatory issues facing drones in general, which could determine which sites open up to the technology.

Henry Evans is one person who might benefit. As a quadriplegic person, he uses telepresence robots, including drones, to visit faraway places from his home in California.

But though Evans is enthusiastic about drones, he is less confident that Hlavacs's idea would work without professional operators on the ground. "They are not safe in museums or in close proximity to other people," he says.

This article appeared in print under the headline "See the sights by air with drone tourism"
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