Proto-Flighting in the Wild: A Creative Technologists Approach to Drone Prototyping

The practice of First Person View (FPV) drone flying is not entirely understood. The physics bending agility of the technology and tight coupling of this with a pilot’s senses is an emerging field of research into embodied relations and Human Drone Interaction (HDI). The assemblage, integration and tuning of a boutique system of FPV hardware and software that is bound together with open-source firmware in a selfdirected mode allows an enormous amount of freedom and application, but also involves tacit knowledge and continuous experimentation that is inextricably bound to processes of prototyping. The role of a do it yourself (DIY) remote control aviation hobbyist who flies FPV drones is complex and multifunctional. The act of flying these high performance tele-operated robots for recreation is built upon a foundation of specialist craft and technical knowledge across multiple fields that range from materials science to computational systems management. This paper will unpack a creative technologist approach of how a DIY FPV pilot integrates hardware, software and firmware with their drone and generates new experiential knowledge through iterative processes of prototyping across multiple fields. This practice is driven by a desire to perfect a phenomenon known as ‘flight feel’ that sits outside the normal aims of a staged prototyping scenario and involves a variety of prototyping methods that when combined with modes of sensing and flying in the wild, becomes what could be considered proto-flighting.