Have you ever wondered whether a drone will crash-land into your house? Does the idea of unmanned aerial vehicles buzzing over your yard make you nervous?
NoFlyZone wants to calm those fears by creating an online database of addresses that drones are forbidden to fly over. “Private property location information will be included in NoFlyZone’s comprehensive airspace database provided to participating drone companies,” reads the explanatory text on the initiative’s website. “This database includes civil and military airspace, airports, hospitals, schools, and other sensitive locations.”
Should Amazon and other commerce firms make good on long-held plans to deliver packages via drone, NoFlyZone will offer the ability to customize the “no fly” list to allow those companies’ machines to leave boxes on your doorstep. But NoFlyZone makes no guarantees that its list will stop drones from actually buzzing over your house.
Of course, there’s already an organization regulating drones: the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which looks unkindly upon drone operators who do things like fly unmanned aerial vehicles around commercial airports. While the FAA has approved some domestic drone use (mostly for commercial applications), it’s still considering whether to let Amazon and its ilk use drones for package delivery and other commerce.
There’s also more than one way to establish a no-fly zone: In an extreme case, the small Colorado town of Deer Trail proposed an ordinance that would issue hunting licenses for drones. But most people would prefer the skies over their homes weren’t filled with flying lead, either; and therein lies the potential market for something like NoFlyZone.
