#47 – The Cool Future of Drones

Bet you didn’t see this subject coming up.

How do drones apply to retired life? If you plan on being around for another 10 years, you’re going to see/experience some amazing changes to what goes on in our airspace.

Three years ago my son Andrew gave me a toy drone in acknowledgement of my then-new position within the FAA’s UAS Integration Office. It’s a cool little contraption that kept our grand daughter and myself entertained for seven minutes at a time before the battery needed recharging. It was also a good tool to learn drone flying skills before moving on to bigger drones.

Three months ago I bought my first quad copter drone with a camera- a Quad Air E58- about the cheapest thing around. There are no GPS inputs, so it’s pure flying- learn quickly or crash and burn. Less than a week out of the box I did a demo flight for Andrew, and he promptly showed me his superior flying skills, even though he’d never flown a drone previously (credit to his video game experiences). Soon thereafter I mastered near-perfect hovering skills, and felt ready to expand my flying skills. Unfortunately, on my 12th flight, I let my drone get beyond the range in which I could control it, the result being that it flew off into the wild blue yonder, landing somewhere deep into nearby woods. Scratch one drone.

Despite this minor personal catastrophe, I’ve learned that it’s much more fun flying drones than sitting behind a laptop helping to develop U.S. policy on drone integration into our national airspace. Doesn’t pay as much as though. Going to start looking for my next cheap drone this week.

So what’s going to happen with drones in the near future and how’s it going to impact us (We’re setting aside the 25 plus years of military drone operations for now and just addressing civilian applications)?

First, keep in mind that just about anything going up in the air is subject to FAA regulations.

  • If you’re interested in flying drones strictly for fun/entertainment, you can buy a toy drone for less than $50 and be flying within an hour. Buying one with a camera and some extra safety features such as automatic return-to-home feature (recommended, based on my experience) will get you up to $100. You can pay hundreds or thousands more, but I recommend a cheap model at first. To fly these legally, you have to follow a couple of regulatory steps:
  • If you’re a competitive person, you can follow the path to drone racing:
  • There’s also an educational path for school systems to pursue:
  • Commercial Drone Operations require Certified Remote Pilots and involve more regulatory steps:

The list of potential operations using drones is constantly growing. Some examples:

  • Real estate marketing where drones are used to make 360 degree video views of homes
  • Other video marketing (think birds-eye commercial or film making)
  • Precision agriculture
  • Linear infrastructure inspections (train tracks, power lines, etc.)
  • Law enforcement support
  • Hospital-to-hospital material deliveries
  • Insurance surveys

But operations with the most potential (for making $$$) are drone deliveries to your front door, which was first talked about by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in 2013. FAA and numerous private/public institutions have been working together for several years to safely accomplish these type operations. They still have a little way to go.

Companies are moving incredibly fast at advancing drone capabilities, but the real challenge is developing safe, reliable “Beyond-Visual-Line-of-Sight”, or BVLOS, capabilities. Four companies that have done so, and achieved FAA certification as of June 2022 to conduct these type operations include Wing (Google), Flight Forward (UPS), Amazon, and Zipline. These companies also have to perfect autonomous operations, to scale, in order to turn a profit.

There’s much more to this community than flying for fun or for profit. Back in February 2020 I was able to witness some amazing drone operations “for good” in Rwanda:

Drone operations are becoming commonplace in locations where the FAA and companies are working together in several U.S. locations: https://www.faa.gov/uas/programs_partnerships/test_sites

These drone operations, however, are “small potatoes” compared to the next big step, what’s known in the community as Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), also known as Urban Air Mobility (UAM). The same technological breakthroughs for unmanned flying and automation are being applied to larger craft and heavier loads. Think the Jetsons (Note, below is a 20 minute video, but you’ll get the idea in the first minute):

While it will take less than two years for these aircraft to start showing up in our skies, it will be a few more years before FAA certification is achieved and regulations are in place to allow for-profit operations.

All for now. Hope this has been educational and enjoyable. Will need to look at the military side at another time.