SAN FRANCISCO – One of the things you come to anticipate after flying a drone for a while is how the people around you will react. If you take off or land near someone who’s unfamiliar with the technology, a few people will be curious; many others will get upset. A loud machine making an angry buzzing sound a few feet from your head is something many humans have an instinctively negative reaction to.
A phrase like “angry buzzing” sounds subjective, but it’s not just my opinion. A NASA studyfound that the sounds of drones were roughly twice as annoying to the average person as the same volume of noise produced by a car or truck. The noise of a drone is more annoying at the same volume because it’s a much higher frequency, one that happens to be particularly unpleasant to the ears of most humans.
DJI, the world’s most popular brand of consumer drones, is trying to do something about that. Its Mavic Pro Platinum, released back in August of this year, comes with a set of redesigned rotor blades that the company claims make the unit 60 percent quieter than the previous model. It tweaked the design of the blades by adding what’s known as a “raked wingtip.” The blades curve through the middle and angle back and up at the tip. To optimize for the new design, DJI also added electronic speed controllers that spin them at a different rate.
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