Gigglebit: epic drone fails (videos)

10 Jan 2015

Gigglebit is Siliconrepublic’s daily dose of the funny and fantastic in science and tech, to help start your day on a lighter note. Today, the crashing of the drones.

Aerial drones are a fantastic technology but the reality is they are still eyed with some suspicion firstly by people who don’t own them and then there’s the privacy advocates and aviation authorities.

However, the technology is capable of capturing breathtaking videos and photos and while to some they may seem out of science fiction, they could have uses that we can’t imagine yet.

In the US, e-commerce giant Amazon is investigating how drones could be used to deliver goods, for example.

Epic catch, sir!

What got us thinking about drones is this video that swept the web in recent days, in which a proud new drone owner narrowly missed sinking his new toy in a pond.

The video, entitled My First Day With My Drone can be seen as a bit of a salutary tale as it shows what could happen if you fail to power up the batteries.

The owner had to dive into the pond to catch the expensive new DJI Phantom 2 before it submerged.

Wedding photo ruined

This inspired us to cast the net wider and we found this wonderful video of a beautiful young married couple, a beautiful landscape and a drone with the heart of a Stuka.

Into the great wide open

This next video shows a drone crashing in the Grand Canyon in the US after it hit a wind pocket. The vistas were glorious but down it went, need we say more?

The sinking of the Bismarck

We love makers and inventors. This particular inventor with a grand hipster moustache wanted to create an amphibious drone that could take off from both land and sea.

It didn’t work.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com