Just watched what I consider to be a rather valuable video, of our friend Mario here taking his little M4P out on an Active track test flight, making some deeply questionable decisions along the way and after the inevitable crash, 'carrying on regardless' before eventually coming to his senses and aborting mission. But I repost this not to criticize his decisions - he knows where he went wrong, and posts this as a warning, and so others can learn from his errors, so all props to him there (new ones presumably! 
But it did make me think about the wider question, which nobody is really mentioning in the comments, and that is: 'Are we ever going to be properly safe whilst in charge of 2 moving vehicles at once ?!'
My very first introduction to EUCs (electric unicycles) was a video I saw of a drone guy filming himself riding one, and he was doing that way before drones had any sort of automatic tracking features - he was riding and piloting the UAV backwards with no 'machine help', which I thought was amazing at the time ! I have ridden EUCs ever since, and still love that hobby, yet even as a rider with 7 years practical XP on both wheels and flying drones (never manual modes tho) I still don't feel truly capable of safely doing both these things at once and giving sufficient attention to the control of each machine.
And yet, so many people try ! And I remain fascinated by their attempts, a lot of which work perfectly well, and seem safe, although it does seem to be impossible to do legally as far as I can gather. For example, the people who track their own cars regularly don't have line of sight of it most of the time, if at all, and I am astonished to see cyclists casually popping their RCs into their backpacks before merrily riding off on their quests, seemingly unbothered by how long it would take them to retrieve control of the craft if it all went wrong. And, if you are navigating some hellish downhill bike trail, surely you need 100% of your attention on that, and not falling off, which means NONE of your attention can be on the drone, and often for great extended periods of time ! And then there's the people who just dangle the RC round their necks on flimsy little lanyards where they are free to bounce about and get their control sticks caught in all the things and I just wonder why this sort of thing isn't more generally objected to !
So just positing that thought to see what everyone else thinks ! Is it reasonable to try and control 2 machines at once, when both require quite a lot of concentration and looking at other things !? Or are my instincts about this massively overly-cautious and unadventurous ?
Don't get me wrong - I am all for testing the features of stuff, and I certainly can't see much wrong with (for example) going to a quiet non-busy park and trying all the things, but I'd never get over the worry of having a controller on me that can't be made immune from fall damage if I crash the wheel. So I have only done those tests so far when I have a (trained) friend / observer along who can watch the drone and hold the controller while I ride.
And now I am going to uniwheel myself to a polling station to vote. As you have probably surmised from the above - I am NOT taking the M4P, even though I am confident that if I only kept it high enough (so no trees or ground based obstacles were ever a problem), it would probably do it just fine !
But it did make me think about the wider question, which nobody is really mentioning in the comments, and that is: 'Are we ever going to be properly safe whilst in charge of 2 moving vehicles at once ?!'
My very first introduction to EUCs (electric unicycles) was a video I saw of a drone guy filming himself riding one, and he was doing that way before drones had any sort of automatic tracking features - he was riding and piloting the UAV backwards with no 'machine help', which I thought was amazing at the time ! I have ridden EUCs ever since, and still love that hobby, yet even as a rider with 7 years practical XP on both wheels and flying drones (never manual modes tho) I still don't feel truly capable of safely doing both these things at once and giving sufficient attention to the control of each machine.
And yet, so many people try !
And I remain fascinated by their attempts, a lot of which work perfectly well, and seem safe, although it does seem to be impossible to do legally as far as I can gather. For example, the people who track their own cars regularly don't have line of sight of it most of the time, if at all, and I am astonished to see cyclists casually popping their RCs into their backpacks before merrily riding off on their quests, seemingly unbothered by how long it would take them to retrieve control of the craft if it all went wrong. And, if you are navigating some hellish downhill bike trail, surely you need 100% of your attention on that, and not falling off, which means NONE of your attention can be on the drone, and often for great extended periods of time ! And then there's the people who just dangle the RC round their necks on flimsy little lanyards where they are free to bounce about and get their control sticks caught in all the things and I just wonder why this sort of thing isn't more generally objected to !So just positing that thought to see what everyone else thinks ! Is it reasonable to try and control 2 machines at once, when both require quite a lot of concentration and looking at other things !? Or are my instincts about this massively overly-cautious and unadventurous ?
Don't get me wrong - I am all for testing the features of stuff, and I certainly can't see much wrong with (for example) going to a quiet non-busy park and trying all the things, but I'd never get over the worry of having a controller on me that can't be made immune from fall damage if I crash the wheel. So I have only done those tests so far when I have a (trained) friend / observer along who can watch the drone and hold the controller while I ride.
And now I am going to uniwheel myself to a polling station to vote. As you have probably surmised from the above - I am NOT taking the M4P, even though I am confident that if I only kept it high enough (so no trees or ground based obstacles were ever a problem), it would probably do it just fine !
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