How’s a Lidar is a national risk?! (It’s easy to build a lidar based drones in a weekend project) Also, knowing plenty of US based drone manufacturers, most of their stuff are dependent on Chinese parts, the radio communication is on top of that list. If I were DJI, I would make Lidar and similar components modular, so they can still sell these drones while consumers can buy these modules later or DIY it, like literally most of the drones, which will be great for other consumers in the world for the easy repairability.
The anti-flock community believes it's because they can destroy image sensors from a distance. And banning the foreign ones means they can order domestic-made drones to have firmware that prevents them from operating in certain ways or in certain (government) areas, among other things.
The finance community thinks they just don't want competition that might rival or sell better than domestic ones, similar to the ban on Chinese EVs.
The privacy community thinks they only want surveillance to be possible from within, likening it to previous bans on DJI drones and Chinese routers. And the administration is currently working on trying to ban other kinds of networking gear as well as cellular modems from China (which is basically every phone in the country).
Would love to hear other theories. Perspectives are fun.
> And banning the foreign ones means they can order domestic-made drones to have firmware that prevents them from operating in certain (government) areas, among other things.
Yeah because DJI drones are well known for their easy to hack firmware and lacking support for no fly zones..right? And they would openly flaunt any US law making any drones sold or flown the US to obey the NFZs? But wait, that's exactly what DJI drones used to do even without a law on the books, before FCC banned them.
NFZ was just one example, there's no limit to what they could force other countries' software to do in their domestic versions. That was really the point I was trying to make.
How is this worse than 4k video, in this age of analytical abundance? The steel content of this argument is pretty low; it's essentially 'technology operates normally = national security risk.'
Why not ban pencils? You can draw maps or schematics of secret things, plus they can be used to stab people!
Most fpv drones don’t even have GNSS, they fly on acro mode or manual one, so that won’t prevent a “loitering munition”. Now for gnss denied autonomous navigation, Lidar isn’t the corner stone part, for indoor ones other sensors do well if not better like stereo cams, outdoor, you don’t need Lidar that much, but also you can use image based navigation, where it compares prestored images to land marks to navigate accurately. That being said, it’s not like Lidars are completely banned, you can buy one, 2d or 3d lidar, and equip it on your drone that you built, you don’t need dji to have it ready for you, so that ban won’t really mitigate any risk assuming there is one.
> They would transmit sparse point clouds to the enemy for training
Restricted facilities already restrict any kind of drone, other locations you can access these info without the need to transmit any point clouds data anyway.
That, or to avoid surrendering yet another technology relevant to the future to China. As if them manufacturing the bulk of world's solar panels, wind turbines and heading for EVs isn't bad enough.
US companies don't even sell consumer drones, so are they going to stay competitive by forcing consumers to buy $4000 enterprise models for their kids to play with?
> Hobbyist drones also don't ship with lidar in stock.
Is Neo a $20 toy? LIDARs are getting cheap quick, at some point when ToF sensors add $10 to BoM they will be in all drones.. I guess except US only SKUs? Not like you can't get pretty much the same data using just a single camera, GPS+IMU fusion and structure-from-motion..
That would need to start with building the manufacturing infrastructure. But that requires to work on long term goals, something the west hasn’t been doing that well over the last 30+ years
I mean, the rest of the world still exists and is generally happy to buy reasonably priced Chinese tech. American isolationists get rather carried away by geography to the point of assuming the rest of world is in a state of cinematic collapse with a few super enemies stalking the ruins. Trump's comments the other day suggesting he's capable of destroying the Swiss economy overnight demonstrate a sort of socioeconomic myopia predicated on the idea that the US is the only consumer market that matters.
yeah, who could ever need accurate and immediate depth perception, having to carry a 4090 in my roomba to badly reconstruct it from 4 pictures so it can stop bumping into walls is like the future man
National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49095714
The anti-flock community believes it's because they can destroy image sensors from a distance. And banning the foreign ones means they can order domestic-made drones to have firmware that prevents them from operating in certain ways or in certain (government) areas, among other things.
The finance community thinks they just don't want competition that might rival or sell better than domestic ones, similar to the ban on Chinese EVs.
The privacy community thinks they only want surveillance to be possible from within, likening it to previous bans on DJI drones and Chinese routers. And the administration is currently working on trying to ban other kinds of networking gear as well as cellular modems from China (which is basically every phone in the country).
Would love to hear other theories. Perspectives are fun.
Yeah because DJI drones are well known for their easy to hack firmware and lacking support for no fly zones..right? And they would openly flaunt any US law making any drones sold or flown the US to obey the NFZs? But wait, that's exactly what DJI drones used to do even without a law on the books, before FCC banned them.
Why not ban pencils? You can draw maps or schematics of secret things, plus they can be used to stab people!
Most fpv drones don’t even have GNSS, they fly on acro mode or manual one, so that won’t prevent a “loitering munition”. Now for gnss denied autonomous navigation, Lidar isn’t the corner stone part, for indoor ones other sensors do well if not better like stereo cams, outdoor, you don’t need Lidar that much, but also you can use image based navigation, where it compares prestored images to land marks to navigate accurately. That being said, it’s not like Lidars are completely banned, you can buy one, 2d or 3d lidar, and equip it on your drone that you built, you don’t need dji to have it ready for you, so that ban won’t really mitigate any risk assuming there is one.
> They would transmit sparse point clouds to the enemy for training
Restricted facilities already restrict any kind of drone, other locations you can access these info without the need to transmit any point clouds data anyway.
The concern isn't China dominating the area of $20 toys. The concern is platforms relevant to industry and military.
Whether that, in turn, can be disentangled from "the area of $20 toys" in case of drones is unclear to me.
Is Neo a $20 toy? LIDARs are getting cheap quick, at some point when ToF sensors add $10 to BoM they will be in all drones.. I guess except US only SKUs? Not like you can't get pretty much the same data using just a single camera, GPS+IMU fusion and structure-from-motion..
FCC proposal doesn’t distinguish that safety sensor from mapping-grade or military LiDAR - it covers any drone that “contains or integrates” LiDAR.
If Air and Mini ain't hobbyist grade idk what is.
Moreover they also have 2 market leaders in that techs
https://preview.redd.it/475jdxno8xfh1.jpg?width=2252&format=...