OT: The Mean Old FAA

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: obvert


The difference, as explained in the video I linked, is that the FAA policy for remote airplanes is a line of sight and several other factors listed in the article from Scientific American quoted below:

I know that. But the FAA has always, as shown in your quotes below, had a pretty hands-off approach to RC aircraft, trusting the hobby nature to keep the problems small. Even so, in light of some of wdolson's points, line of sight RC aircraft available to any hobbyist could be flown into the engine of a 747 on takeoff roll by a terrorist. Some RC aircraft I have seen have jet engines and an 8- to 10-foot wingspan. They could easily kill someone on the ground if they malfunctioned.

The difference with drones is it's a paradigm shift and I see the FAA as treating it as a simple extension of the RC model world they're used to. Underneath that there are at least two bifurcated paths to the issue: RCed drones and autonomous drones such as the beer-delivery model I linked. GPS-controlled route flyers not under actual control of a human on the ground. Very different issues.

Then, in 2007 the FAA turned its attention to model airplanes once again. Now termed drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), the agency banned their use for business purposes. “We recognized that unmanned aircraft systems [UAS] would expand significantly and [took steps] to make sure UAS operation [did] not adversely affect safety,” said an FAA spokesperson who would not give his or her name. “Integration of UAS into the nation’s skies must be deliberate and incremental to avoid introducing unacceptable safety risks,” the FAA says.[/color][/font]

Well, it's seven years later and . . . The horse is out and business is moving ahead with the tech while the FAA is waiting. The Amazon delivery thing got all the snarky press, but out here in fly-over country the demand for private as well as state-owned drones is increasing fast. They allow capital assets to be leveraged as well as huge labor savings over manned helicopters. Farmers looking to survey distant fields for weeds, ranchers looking for stock, fishermen wanting data on migration patterns, backcountry guides looking for weather conditions in hiking zones, DOTs on the prairie wanting ice data on roads far from metros, ecologists looking at erosion, oil service companies that wish they could fly 20 pounds of spare parts out to rigs without a million-dollar chopper, four-figures in fuel, and a very expensive pilot. Already Realtors all over the place are using illegal ones to take videos of properties from the air to put on Web sites. Drones have the power to increase GDP in marked ways.

Delivery is about the hardest regulatory issue there is because delivery means interacting with the people-envelope on the ground. Since the Amazon thing I have read proposals to design "delivery funnels" so drones could drop in vertically to deliver and the goods would be secure until the owner used a PIN to access the container. Maybe they never work over central cities. I don't know. They would need collision-avoidance in the terminal phase (infrared, video, radar?) and in flight phase data structures that were universal so some kind of control system could be devised to keep them apart without pilots. We're on the cusp of fielding driverless autos, so I think this could be done. Cars are a lot harder to design for since each has a fragile human and only two dimensions to work with.

The problem I was speaking to was the speed of the FAA , or rather the lack of it. Big, big money is sniffing around the perimeter of drone tech and uses. If big money is forced to wait too long big money goes to Congress. I don't want Congress writing drone legislation. I want the FAA to write drone rules. They're the experts on things that fly, not Congress. But they can't slow-walk it much longer.

The article goes on to state many examples, and also make it clear that this so far is only a policy, but not a law, although at least one fine for commercial drone flights doing videography has been given out, which is being challenged in court. Very interesting.

Drones add to the already vast issue of privacy rights. The civil systems will work it out, but yes, it will be interesting when everybody can look over privacy fences by the dark of the moon with video cameras.