By William Mansel, idigitaltimes.com
When the first airplanes were introduced into the skies the world suddenly
got a lot smaller. Planes changed how quickly people got from point A to point
B, and they changed infrastructure and culture. Planes created new opportunity,
but they also created new rules.
Drones are now in the same territory. During a Consumer Electronics Show
2016 press conference, Brendan Schulman, vice president of policy and legal
affairs at DJI, a leading Chinese drone manufacturer, said drone technology
"is now viewed, by I think many people, as the greatest evolution in aviation
since the jet engine if not the Wright Brothers.”
With the rise in popularity of drones—an estimated one million were expected to be sold this past holiday
season—policy makers, hobbyists and drone manufacturers are trying to figure
out how the future of drones relates to public safety, privacy and usage.
For Raj Talluri, senior vice president of product management at Qualcomm (a
mobile telecommunications company), those areas will be dictated by how drone
technology advances. “I think, as with most things, as the technology gets
better and you can prove it’s going to be safe…I think people will get
comfortable with it in time,” Talluri told Newsweek.
Talluri sees the future of drones being a significant part of a connected
world, part of the Internet of Things (IoT). He said Qualcomm's Snapdragon Flight, the company’s new drone navigation software, makes
the development and connectivity of drones better by creating more efficient,
smarter devices. This, he said, will make drones safer and further their
advancement.
“Before we introduced Snapdragon Flight, we were seeing that people were
using a whole bunch of, almost a hodgepodge of chips, to build a drone,”
Talluri said. “What we thought, if we can integrate a lot of those components
into this Snapdragon Flight system, it makes the drones much smaller, much
lighter and the battery can be much smaller.”
Snapdragon Flight’s system makes flying safer by helping drones avoid hitting
objects and making them go where they’re intended. It calculates factors like
object avoidance through the use of down facing tracking cameras, stereo
cameras, motion planning, obstacle mapping and autonomous path planning.
While the technology like Snapdragon Flight makes drones smarter it’s not
the only advancement taking shape in the industry. How drones work is also tied
to how we use them. And one of the more potentially significant uses for drones
comes from Amazon Prime Air.
The service, first proposed in 2013, aims to use drones to deliver packages
to customers in less than 30 minutes. While it has yet to get off the ground, Amazon says it will launch when the
technology is ready (it says it’s not yet) and when "we have the
regulatory support needed to realize our vision.”
Amazon Vice President of Global Public Policy Paul Misener said in an interview with Yahoo that the service hasn’t been priced yet but the
company is working on using a wide range of drones depending upon where the
package is going. The drone itself, which will deliver goods weighing less than
five pounds, will be different depending on if it's raining or if the
destination is in a city or the country.
While not ready for the public yet, Misener said the company could launch
the service outside the U.S. if the technology outpaces the regulations.
"Well, we have customers all around the world, of course. There's no
reason why the United States must be first," Misener told Yahoo, but, "we hope it is."
Are Regulations Hindering Drone Development? It Depends On Who You Ask
Despite advances with GPS and obstacle avoidance technology, drone users,
whether they are commercial or recreational, can’t legally fly a drone beyond
where they can physically see. This “beyond the visual line of sight”
regulation is a huge hurdle for Amazon Prime Air and other drone technologies.
“We clearly recognize that [drones are} going to be a huge commercial
benefit,” Marke Gibson, the FAA's senior advisor of unmanned aircraft systems
(UAS) integration, said at CES. But, “how do we do this safely and what
are the key components of that? It’s about walking that balance between the
public trust and safety and enabling innovation.”
Schulman said if recent history is any indication, drone technology will
continue to advance at a much faster rate than industry regulations. Commercial
and technological advancements will require the FAA, manufactures and users to
collaborate to make sure innovation isn’t stifled, he said.
“UAS is the most fundamental change in aviation we’ll see in our lifetime,”
Schulman said at CES drone forum.
FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said the agency is aware of the pace of
drone development and that it must meet those challenges. That doesn’t mean,
however, the FAA will succumb to industry pressure at the cost of public
safety.
“This is not going to be a finite process, where one day we sit back and
say, ‘OK, we’re done,’” Huerta said during a press conference at CES 2016.
“Maintaining the highest levels of safety requires us to constantly evolve in
our approach, whether we’re talking about commercial aircraft like Boeing 747s,
or unmanned quadcopters that weigh a few pounds.
“Over the past year, working with our government, industry and model
aircraft community partners, we have made very significant progress on this
front,” Huerta continued. “And the coming year is going to be an exciting and
challenging time as we continue to support existing initiatives and implement
new ones while leveraging our partners’ energy and creativity to identify even
more integration strategies.”
On December 21, the FAA began requiring drone users to register with
the agency as part of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Registration Act. It states all drones weighing between 0.5 and 55
pounds have to be entered into the database. The FAA announced on
January 22 that in the first 30 days of the registration system nearly
300,000 drone users have registered.
The registration, which costs $5, is for individual drone users, not each
specific drone. Each user-specific number is to be written on each drone. This
is an area where there seems to be positive consensus among drone stakeholders.
“They made some good moves in terms of the registering the person, not each
aircraft, multiple crafts, same person.” Douglas Burnet, co-founder of the Aerial Sports League, tells Newsweek.
“It’s great that it’s not being done at point of sale, not some mandatory
thing you have to do before you purchase the device,” Micah Barbato, account
manager for 3D Robotics, told us. “We need to attach a human to the drone,”
instead of a serial number for each drone.
The registration has been contentious however, and some hobbyists argue
that they don’t take into account the weight of drones. There’s also a debate
about who should be allowed to access to the registration database.
For those racing drones, the half-pound requirement seems arbitrary.
“Most racing drones are under a pound and a pound seemed to be just an
obvious place to put it,” Burnett said. “The weight restrictions have made it
so onerous, it’s every [flying] toy.”
Drones weighing more than 55 lbs cannot use typical registration systems
and must use the aircraft registry process, which includes a whole host of other forms and rules
to be met.
Many drone users specializing in commercial or government usage (like
inspections for bridges) see the registration act and the FAA involvement as a
necessary step to ensure safety of the public. Video- and photography-centric
drone users don’t feel the act negatively impacting them at this time (what’s
another $5 for a drone that cost several hundred dollars) but are generally
cautious about future regulations. Many racing and other recreational drone entities see the current drone
regulations as flawed and burdensome.
Adam Zylka, a technical engineer with senseFly (a Parrot-owned company focused on the
development of aerial imaging drones, specifically for commercial uses) tells Newsweek the
company has worked closely with state and federal DOTs across the country,
highlighting its work with the Minnesota DOT.
At CES, Zylka was demoing the eXom, which is designed as an intelligent mapping and inspection drone. With a
camera that rotates 180 degrees and has protected downward-facing props, he
said the eXom could bump into bridges and other structures it’s inspecting
without damaging the device.
senseFly Business Developer Baptiste Tripard doesn’t envision many more
unforeseen laws from the FAA that would stymie drone makers.
“What we try to do is to be involved in the whole operation, trying to
define the best framework, the best drone practices in the U.S.,” Tripard said.
“Since we’ve come from nothing to the exemption process. Today we have more
than 100 people operating the devices under that new exemption.”
The exemption Tripard mentioned is called a section 333. It requires drone operators seeking to use their drone for profit to
apply. Each request for a 333 is granted on a case-by-case basis through the
FAA and the Secretary of Transportation.
Anyone flying drones for personal use, like photography, is not required to
apply for an additional permit.
Barbato was showcasing 3D Robotics’ Solo, a photography- and video-based drone that uses GoPro, during the Drone Rodeo at CES. The event is designed to demo the latest technologies in the field in a
real-world setting, not just inside a convention hall.
He said registering a drone shouldn’t be taxing, or cause complaints.
Similar to having to register your car, it’s something you have to do to
operate legally, he said. However, Barbato said it’s important drone makers
remain part of the ongoing process.
“We do and always will promote safe flying,” Barbato said at CES. “We’re
working closely with the FAA to help them understand what regulations are
necessary, well at least our humble opinion. But, we’re working with them.
Whatever they say we’re going to do. We’re not trying to go against the grain
in any way.”
Talluri believes the future is drones, and the sooner everyone embraces the
industry the sooner they’ll understand what goes into drone making and why the
advances with unmanned aircraft are exciting and fun.
“I think the technology is evolving,” Talluri said. “Particularly with
connectivity and the significant amount of processing power at the device,
you’re able to do these things well…things like computer vision, obstacle
avoidance, navigation, location…when you combine all things you will be able to
get to that point. It’s just at a stage of evolution that once you see it that
[you say], ‘Yeah, it works.’”
Newsweek/iDigitalTimes was unable to
reach Amazon for comment on its Amazon Prime Air service.
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