Move to OK commercial drone flights
‘Over people’ ban frustrates host of industries ‘It’s becoming a reality in Rwanda’
WASHINGTON, April 4, (AP): A government-sponsored committee is recommending standards that could clear the way for commercial drone flights over populated areas and help speed the introduction of package delivery drones and other uses not yet possible, The Associated Press has learned.
The Federal Aviation Administration currently prohibits most commercial drone flights over populated areas, especially crowds. That ban frustrates a host of industries that want to take advantage of the technology.
“Every TV station in the country wants one, but they can’t be limited to flying in the middle of nowhere because there’s no news in the middle of nowhere,” said Jim Williams, a former head of the FAA’s drone office who now advises the industry for Dentons, an international law firm.
Cellular network providers also want to loosen restrictions so drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, can inspect cell towers, which often are in urban areas. Amazon’s vision for package deliveries entails drones winging their way over city and suburban neighborhoods.
The AP obtained a copy of the recommendations, which were sent to the FAA late Friday. The agency is not bound by the recommendations and can make changes when it writes the final rules.
The recommendations call for creating four categories of small drones that commercial operators can fly over people, including crowds in some cases.
The first category of drones would weigh no more than about a half-pound (230 gms). They essentially could fly unrestricted over people, including crowds. Drone makers would have to certify that if the drone hit someone, there would be no more than a 1 percent chance that the maximum force of the impact would cause a serious injury.
For the three other categories, the drones would have to fly at least 20 ft (6 mtrs) over the heads of people and keep a distance of at least 10 ft (3 mtrs) laterally from someone. According to the recommendations: Drones in the second category are LOS ANGELES, April 4, (AP): Drone delivery might be years away in the US, but it’s becoming a reality in Rwanda this summer.
A San Francisco-based drone delivery company says it’ll start making its first deliveries of blood and medicine in Rwanda in July.
Zipline International Inc, backed by tech heavyweights like Sequoia Capital and Google Ventures, demonstrated its technology for journalists last week in an open field in the San Francisco Bay area.
In a demo broadcast on Periscope on Friday, a staffer launched a fixed-wing plane weighing just 22 pounds off a launcher that used compressed air.
Electric-powered propellers took it the rest of the way, on a flight that could extend to 75 miles round trip, using military-grade GPS and software to navigate.
As it dipped low before the drop-off area, the bottom popped
expected to be mostly small quadcopters — drones with multiple arms and propellers, and weighing 4 pounds (1.8 kgs) to 5 pounds (2.3 kgs) — but there is no weight limit. Flights over people, including crowds, would depend on the design and operating instructions. Manufacturers would have to demonstrate through testing that the chance of a serious injury was 1 percent or less.
Drones in the third category could not fly over crowds or densely populated areas. These drones would be used for work in closed or restricted sites where the people that the drones fly over have permission from the drone operator to be present. Those people would be incidental to the drone operations and flights over them would be brief, rather than sustained. Manufacturers would have to show there was a 30 percent chance or less that a person open, and a cardboard box with a parachute made of butcher paper and biodegradable tape burst out, plopping to the ground a few steps away from CEO Keller Rinaudo, who walked over to retrieve it.
“You have a database of people. You know their lives are in danger,” he said. “Can you get them what they need fast enough? That’s been the mission from the start”.
Company executives said the cost of each flight was about the same as a motorcycle trip, but far more reliable.
And because deliveries of packages up to 3.5 pounds could be completed in 15-30 minutes, modest packaging eliminated the need for refrigeration along the way, which saves on wasted supplies such as blood.
“We leapfrog broken refrigerators, we leapfrog the lack of roads”, said Keenan Wyrobek, Zipline’s head of product and engineering.
would be seriously injured if struck by the drone at the maximum strength impact possible.
Drones in the fourth category could have sustained flights over crowds. Working with the FAA and engaging the local community, the operator would have to develop a “congested area plan” showing how flight risks would be mitigated. As before, the risk of serious injury would have to be 30 percent or less. Safety tests would be more exacting and the FAA would set a limit on how strong the drone’s maximum impact could be.
“The risks are nominal”, said Michael Drobac, executive director of the Small UAV Coalition. “The reality is the technology would likely save lives rather than threaten them”.
The FAA announced the formation of the committee in February as a way
Two hubs contained in modified shipping containers with 10 to 15 planes each are all that’s required to serve all of Rwanda, the company says. The Rwandan government announced its deal with Zipline in February.
It plans to operate in other countries later this year if it proves it can operate successfully in Rwanda.
Rinaudo says the company for now is focused on medical supply delivery in emerging economies where there is less air traffic and regulations are easier to deal with than in the US or Europe.
“The US has one of the most complicated airspaces in the world and for that reason the (Federal Aviation Administration) is even more risk-averse than most regulators”, he said. “So I think where this will start is in environments where the need is incredibly high and the airspace is relatively empty”.
to circumvent traditional federal rulemaking procedures, which can take years. The committee was made up of 27 companies or trade associations, including drone manufacturers and companies that want to fly drones, as well as airline and private pilots, airports, crop dusting companies and helicopter operators.
A last-minute disagreement nearly kept the committee from meeting the Friday deadline for the recommendations.
The Air Line Pilots Association and trade associations for the helicopter and crop dusting industries wanted to require that all commercial drone operators pass an aviation knowledge test administered in person by the FAA and receive a background check from the Transportation Security Administration, according to an industry official familiar with the discussions.