Regulators prepare for drone invasion
Businesses may have started planning for the day when drones help their future plans take flight, but experts say corporate visions will have to stay more grounded for several years.
The regulatory framework that has made Canada a welcoming destination for small- scale commercial drone use is in no way ready for a more broad- based adoption of unmanned aircraft, they said, adding laws and traffic management systems would have to be in place before more ambitious drone-based projects could take off.
They said such efforts would include the Prime Air initiative that online retail giant Amazon is refining, in part by testing aircraft in rural British Columbia.
Amazon has put forward a tantalizing vision that evokes city skies teaming with drones that deposit packages on customer doorsteps moments after they’re ordered.
But lawyers, business owners and drone manufacturers all agree that such a project would be difficult to implement.
“Technically our system is flexible enough to deal with it. In practice ... when the airspace truly becomes congested, we’re probably years away from that,” said Diana Cooper, head of drones and robotics at law firm LaBarge Weinstein.
The country’s regulations for unmanned aircraft are currently spelled out by Transport Canada, Cooper said, adding that there are very few hard and fast rules to date.
Businesses wanting to use drones for day- to- day operations negotiate their own terms with Transport Canada when they apply for a Special Flight Operations Certificate.
Cooper says first- time commercial efforts are subject to fairly restrictive SFOCs. Amazon’s current testing facility in B. C. was arranged through such an arrangement, but Cooper said the scope of that project falls within parameters the government is used to working with.
A wild west atmosphere would ensue if drones took to the skies en masse today, said Cooper, but added that NASA has already begun working on a project to mitigate those issues.
“Basically what they’re doing is creating highways in the sky,” she said.