Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Too Bee a Drone
If we have named a
technology after a male bee that dies shortly after fulfilling a very temporary
male duty, does that suggest that this is a limited technology… or that it has
simply been given the wrong name? Does Amazon really want to deliver your packages
this way? Can it legally? Can ambulance drones rise above impenetrable traffic
to save lives or are we just kidding ourselves? I mean more than dropping an
emergency monitor, antidote or defibrillator? Literally picking up the patient?
“Though a drone in flight
now is as rare as Sputnik-era satellites were in the late 1950s, in a decade or
so it’s unlikely anyone will bother to look up at one. The FAA [Federal
Aviation Administration] estimates that drone sales will grow from 2.5 million
this year to 7 million in 2020. The overwhelming majority of drones now
registered with the FAA — about 99 percent — are owned by people who fly them
as a hobby.
“But there already are
10,602 registered commercial drones, and the potential for growth in their use
is enormous. The FAA projects sale of drones intended for commercial use will
triple from 600,000 this year to 2.7 million in 2020.
“‘Drones are essentially
aerial robots,’ said Ed Felten, deputy chief technology officer in the White
House Office of Science and Technology Policy. ‘These are much more than flying
cameras. It’s still a nascent technology.’
“Drones will be used to
monitor traffic, search for the missing and police suspects, help control the
flow of movement at big construction and agricultural sites, maintain
surveillance over closely guarded locations, collect video at athletic events
and during breaking news events and provide door-step package delivery…
“The time when drones
will be more common than airplanes, and perhaps birds, over America’s cities is
closer than people realize, experts say. Already, the number of registered
drones exceeds the number of airplanes. With the myriad of commercial uses for
drones, the FAA, NASA and would-be fleet operators are hard at work on systems
to keep them from crashing into one another.” The Washington Post, June 21st.
Are these thousands and thousands of flying accidents waiting to happen or is
there method in the FAA’s probable fairly lax regulation of this exploding
trend?
Clearly, the FAA is only
at the beginning of learning how to grapple with this technology, only applying
basic rules until it learns more. But how quickly can it apply reason before
tragedy redefines their mandate? Here are the basics of the new commercial
rules:
“The Federal
Aviation Administration’s new commercial drone rules allow a broad range of
businesses to use drones under 55 pounds, but with several restrictions: The
drones must be operated by a pilot who has passed a written test and is at
least 16 years old. And drones can be flown only below 400 feet, during the day
and at least five miles away from airports.
“The new F.A.A. rules do
not necessarily preclude a hodgepodge of state and local drone regulations that
have popped up in recent years. The administration sent a letter to states and
cities saying they recommend everyone follow their lead. But it is only a
recommendation.
“The F.A.A.
stopped short of giving a green light to package delivery, a goal of Amazon and
Google, which have pushed regulators to create rules that would allow them to
transfer part of their ground-based delivery systems to the sky. The new guidelines
mandate that a commercial drone operator must always have the machine within
line of sight — a rule that, for now, makes delivering packages unfeasible…
Still, the action brings the drone delivery vision one step closer to reality.
And experts predict that in time federal regulators will get comfortable with
the notion.” New York Times, June 21st.
Amazon is taking this
space very seriously, suspicious of the potential of government
over-regulation. As the Whitehouse and the FAA announce the above-noted initial
regulatory structure based on 4,600 public comments, this huge online retailer
has some additional suggestions: “Amazon… says the management systems that will
keep drones from colliding — with each other, with airplanes and with people —
need to be conceived faster than the FAA norm.
“‘We simply don’t have
the option of going through the traditional kind of five year time span in
which we come up with regulatory outcomes and the standards,’ said Sean
Cassidy, director of strategic partnerships at Amazon Prime Air. ‘Actually,
speed is our friend. [Unmanned traffic management (UTM)] is powerful force to
help introduce coherence where there is going to be increasing chaos.’
“The FAA should set and
enforce standards for commercial traffic, he says, but otherwise leave it to
industry… ‘They’re not going to be in the business of actually managing or
helping to supply those essential services for traffic,’ Cassidy said. ‘That is
something that is absolutely best delegated to the industry and the innovators.
Let them figure that solution out.’
“[University thinkers
have also addressed the problem. For example,] MIT professor John Hansman
agrees… ‘It’s not going to be a command and control system because we can’t
afford it and we don’t need it,’ he said. ‘It really will be an information
service and an information protocol. It’s really going to be an information
exchange. The potential is that the UTM would become a common platform that
people could sign onto.’… Cassidy said operators of commercial fleets must come
up with standard interfaces and protocols recognized by other drone fleets.”
The Post.
Lots of flexibility
relying heavily on private (vs public) infrastructure? The feds provide
information, but the private sector makes the decisions based on that
information? Interesting, but what happens when that infrastructure fails to
prevent the mega-tragedy we all fear? And so far, we have a pretty minimal set
of regulations.
Picture American big city
streets back in the 1920s, when traffic jams began, without traffic signals…
just cops often sent to a jam well after gridlock. We just may be approaching
the same issue over our skies… and it would be nice to control the mess… before
it becomes a very big mess.
I’m
Peter Dekom, and what looks like an amusing problem right now becomes a
dangerous logistical quagmire if the FAA doesn’t get it right pretty quickly.
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