Research Conducted By Virginia Tech Shows Small Chance Of Serious Head Trauma Is Likely

Being struck in the head by a drone weighing under 2.6 pounds has only a 5 percent chance of causing a serious head injury, according to a recently-released study from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA.

VT is one of the FAA's sanctioned drone test sites. They began the study back in January of this year with a goal of enabling flights over people. To conduct the tests, different drones were flown directly into a test dummy, mimicking what might happen if an aircraft accidentally hits someone. Sensors in the dummy’s head and neck measure the force generated by the impact. The research also included drop tests to simulate what might happen in an aircraft suddenly lost power and fell from the sky, hitting someone on the head, according to a story published in January by the university.

Bloomberg reports that the results were published in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering. It concluded that the risk of injury increased with the mass of the aircraft being tested, and that the risk of head injury is greater if the drone falls on a person rather than flies into them. It focused only on head trauma and did not assess the risk of injury from spinning rotor blades or other injuries.

The study was conducted using three DJI drones, the smallest of which was the Phantom 3. The results showed that while the risk for injury from the Phantom 3 was small, impact from a DJI S1000+ drone with eight rotors and weighing 24 pounds increased the risk of injury to about 70 percent.

(Image from Virginia Tech news release)

FMI: Original Report