UAVs: A Commercial Future?

UAVs: A Commercial Future?

Joe Shonk

AVT 422

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are not only advancing technologically, but are also becoming more capable and versatile.   A growing number of aerial applications such as border patrol, pipeline patrol, and wildfire detection are a few that are now being considered as a job for a drone.  This additional air traffic, however, is going to pose problems in our current National Airspace (NAS) systems.  The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is issuing Certificates of Authorization (CoA) to users allowing them to operate their UAS.  This affords the FAA a way of tracking all current drones operating in the country and will prove invaluable information as drones become fully integrated.  Several issues stand the tallest concerning this integration in the years to come, such as the regulations for these drones to operate under.  Additionally the regulations will have to outline certification and classification of the aircraft themselves based on the mission, size, equipment, and operating ceilings.  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is working directly with the FAA in an effort to seamlessly bring UAS to operational civilian and commercial status.  The FAA will collaborate with NASA to construct 5 testing sites for UAS where they will collect a working knowledge of abilities, tolerances, and determine levels of safety they can be operated at.  Although military uses of UAS have been implemented since 1994, NASA looks to employ research roles to include high altitude atmosphere sampling, measurement of crops, and conduits for telecommunications.  The FAA is working diligently to regulate and introduce UAS to our country’s airspace; it is only a matter of time before they become commercially implemented.

Overcoming the regulatory obstacles for UAS to become commercially available will not likely be difficult as more applications of drones are discovered.  The technology is more than capable of handling a large variety of tasks, and many blooming companies are willing to take advantage and provide brand new aerial applications to the public.  Government funded projects will likely be the biggest consumer, providing initial UAS integration, with research related tasks such as weather and atmosphere observations, and environmental monitoring.  Other prospective markets for UAS are emergency cargo delivery (e.g. organs), agricultural spraying, volcanic activity observation, forest fire sighting, and pipeline & power line patrols.  These and many more applications of surveillance and research are going to create tens of thousands of jobs over the next decade; the growth of a practically brand new industry. 

References

Bauer, J. (2012). Integrating UAVs into the national airspace system. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Retrieved from                                                                 http://uvs-info.com/phocadownload/05_3g_2005/10_NASA-ACCESS5.pdf

Finn, R. L., Wright, D. (2012) Unmanned aircraft systems: Surveillance, ethics and privacy in civil applications. Computer Law & Security Review, 28, 184-194.

Federal Aviation Administration. (2012). FAA makes progress with UAS integration. Retrieved from http://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=68004

Nonami, K. (2007) Prospect and recent research & development for civil use autonomous unmanned aircraft as UAV and MAV. Journal of System Design and Dynamics, 1(2), 120-128.