Drones and Phones
Drones and Phones
Published : 16-Aug-2015 05:23
Two news stories from Colorado's 'big two' resort groups in the past few days have pointed to the latest stages of how the rapidly evolving use of technology on the ski slopes may be used and controlled in the wider world.
Firstly Vail Resorts have announced that they will 'crowd source anonymised data' from the mobile phones of people on the slopes of their four Colorado resorts this winter in order to gather data on where lift queues are building up.
Secondly Aspen have announced they're banning the use of drones at their four Colorado ski areas. The increasingly popular, easy to obtain and affordable devices are becoming an ever more common site on ski slopes, with Aspen says, potential dangers particularly for ski lifts and in the case of its Buttermilk ski area, nearby planes using the local airport. The US Forest Service, which controls much of the land on which many US ski areas operate, had already clarified its position on private drone usage earlier in the year saying any operators must have official permissions from the country's Federal Aviation Authority.
The Vail Resorts move is the highlight of the fifth edition of the group's Epic Mix app, which has been called 'Epic Mix Time.'
The new feature, based on similar recently introduced technology used at New York's JFK airport and Disneyland parks, collects anonymous location and movement data from phone and similar device users on the slopes to cleverly calculate queue times at most lifts at the resorts of Breckenridge, Beaver Creek, Keystone and Vail. It then transmits collected queue data back to Epic Mix App users top they can see where there are queue free lifts, helping skier flow around each ski area.
Slope users do not need to opt in and cannot opt out (except by not carrying a phone that is turned on presumably) for their phone's data to be used in the process, however the technology appears to avoid privacy laws as firstly it does not collect personal data and secondly the collected data is almost immediately permanently 'dumped' after it has been used for the live queuing calculations.
The Epic Mix Time technology will be rolled out at Vail's other ski areas in California, Utah, the US Midwest and Australia in winter 2016-17.
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