On the future of "Drones" and UAVs

Kyle M.

As I'm sure many of you are aware, there's been a lot of talk in recent months in Industry, Government, and the Media about Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and the challenges associated with them (and unfortunately, far less coverage about their potential). Unfortunately, incidents where UAS interfere with full sized aircraft, emergency operations, the public, and wildlife are becoming unfortunately common; it's difficult to go more than a day or two without hear about some "drone"-related incident on the news. Regardless of whether or not the matter is being blown out of proportion, it's a serious issue that's attracted the attention of officials at nearly every level of the government. Again, most of this is probably not anything new, but I wanted to give a bit of background.

Up until this point, I've seen the UAS industry resist almost all attempts at regulation (but maybe I'm missing something), but I think it's time that they (and I) swallow their pride and accept the fact that "Like it or Not, Drone [Regulation] is Coming" (I highly recommend reading the whole article). The UAS industry has grown to the point where the old model of self-regulation and a close partnership with the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) is unfortunately, failing. And while responsible operators such as ourselves (or so I'd like to think) may not have made the mess, I argue that we ought to take a greater role in cleaning it up, else we get left in the regulatory carnage without a say. (I am aware that UAS associations and the AMA are lobbying on behalf of the community, but I wonder if we can do more - and that starts with conversations like this)

Federal, State, and Local governments (and other NGOs) are all making moves towards increased regulation (I don't really care if some of the regulation could be seen as illegal, as I think that's beside the point at the moment, given how fluid regulation can be). It's an unbelievably complicated maze of guidelines, statues, notices, proposed regulations, etc that I won't pretend to have a solid understanding of. Nor do I have any sort "solution." What I'm really after is a constructive conversation...what could a realistic system of regulation look like? How can we maintain an acceptable level of safety and privacy while minimizing detrimental effects on the industry? How can we influence the process? Please, share your thoughts, I'm eager to hear what ya'll have to say.

Resources I've found interesting/useful:
Center for the Study of the Done @ Bard College - publishes weekly e-mail updates about all things drone-related
B4UFLY iPhone App by the FAA - lets you view airspace restrictions and plan flights

Heater.

Surely all those regulations applying to model aircraft apply to these model aircraft that just happen to have now wings, rotors and navigation intelligence. Why is there any need for change.

Personally the last thing I want to see is to make it possible for there to be hundreds of these annoying buzzing things around us all the time. Especially with their privacy invading possibilities.

Ttailspin

If I can't fly my Mono copter at that location, Why would it be ok to fly a Quad copter at the same location?.
Just because it can take off from a picnic table, does not make it ok to do so..

All the rules are in place for model aircraft, So, no more regulation needed.

Kyle M.

Note that Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS, as the FAA defines (and regulates) them, include all small unmaned aircraft (model planes, model gliders, model helicopters, small multirotors). They make no distinction between multirotors used for recreational purposes and other small unmanned aircraft (as listed above) for recreational users.

lardom

Heater. wrote: »

Personally the last thing I want to see is to make it possible for there to be hundreds of these annoying buzzing things around us all the time. Especially with their privacy invading possibilities.

I doubt you'd ever see "hundreds". Bandwidth would be a major problem. They do fall out of the sky so flying over people, and private property, is a liability problem. Also we'll probably start seeing jamming devices.
Talking to another RC enthusiast I discovered that some large corporations are trying to buy bandwidth allocated to Ham radio. Obviously, we need to speak up.
I personally have noted a difference in peoples' reactions when they 'see' me flying my quadcopter as opposed to describing my "drone"to those who get their views from the mass media.

LoopyByteloose

Both 'drones' and UAVs are here to stay. There are lots of ways to resolve radio bandwidth.

There are just too many advantages for industry, law enforcement, military, emergency services, science, and so on for them to be rejected by societies.

But we are in the midsts of resolving better definition of how air space can be shared, how privacy should be respected, and recognition of the real liabilities of wingless aircraft falling out of the sky when a failure occurs.

Traditionally, r/c model flight has worked very hard to get users to be aware of their surrounds and to be cooperative with people that want quiet enjoyment of the shared outdoors.

I suspect that effort will continue and likely prevail once the novelty of doing something naughty wears off.

I am actually more concerned about people with lasers pointing at airplane cockpits. There is just no reason to do so. It is similar to throwing bricks off a freeway overpass. Such things just shouldn't be done.

As for bothering animals, we have been chasing them with airplanes and helicopters for many years, or just running over them as they try to cross roadways. I don't have any good answers, but would hope people try to minimize the impact.

Not all animals have difficulty with machines. My dog loves to ride the motor scooter and thinks cars were made to be is mobile dog house. The neighbor's dog is envious and demands rides around the block because his master doesn't drive a motor scooter.

xanadu

Cover your liabilities, offer training and hope for the best! I stopped flying airplanes at night because of laser pointers, not drones. The first couple of times I was hit it wasn't a big deal. The last time I was hit with a green laser on final approach things didn't go well, and that was my last night flight for a very long time.

There are a lot of issues besides drones, but that doesn't help drones at all. It just adds to the growing list of problems, and not to the shrinking list of solutions. The FAA will do their thing with a written test, can't fly within x feet of y, etc. That is realistic to me. It is more than they did for model airplanes, because they're allowing commercial use at the same time. It seems like things are doing really well, considering the FAA is also implementing the next generation of airspace and navigation rules at the same time.

Heater.

Bandwidth is not such a huge problem if the machine has it's own nav system and intelligence and can do a lot autonomously.

Huge corporations, Amazon, would not be lobbying and paying for this if the thought it was impossible.

We do need to speak up. For many reasons, taking Ham Radio band width is perhaps the least of them.

Surely the common perception is that a "drone" is a guided bomb used by the USA to kill people in foreign counties, without actually declaring war on them, in a cowardly way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan

Meanwhile people seeing you fly your quadcopter are just seeing some fun with a model aircraft.

As for "falling out of the sky", to my mind its akin to setting up a trebushe and launching powered up lawn mowers into public places. Don't we have laws that cover that already?

jones

The problem isn't a lack of workable regulations, it's that some people won't obey regulations whether they are workable or not. You may have noticed that the discussions haven't been about relaxing the regulations to what drone operators might consider realistic, they've been discussing fines, penalties, and countermeasures. Take a look at the Federal Aviation Regulations if you want to see what the Feds consider a realistic system. It's a massive body of regulations, and all pilots have to be familiar with the relevant parts and live by them. For better or worse, drone operations are going to have to stay compatible with that existing system, which is what the FAA has been wrestling with.

Kyle M. wrote: »

What I'm really after is a constructive conversation...what could a realistic system of regulation look like?

xanadu

Here's some interesting action - http://www.sandiego6.com/news/local/Poway-becomes-first-California-city-to-pass-no-drone-zone-323997541.html

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

The less skill it takes to fly these things, the more of them there will be in the air. Once the necessity for eye-hand coordination is eliminated and prices continue to drop, multicopters will become even more ubiquitous than they are now. And it's the ubiquity that becomes a problem in the eyes of some: i.e. the possibility that they're accessible to unskilled pilots. IOW, one mosquito is no big deal, but a swarm of them demands more attention.

-Phil

Keith Young

Kyle M. wrote: »

What I'm really after is a constructive conversation...what could a realistic system of regulation look like?

The only thing I can really predict is it will probably be a mess, and it probably won't be good for hobbyists or business.

From what I see any issue they can construe as a safety issue gives them free reign to start new branches of government over and regulate away.

They can also pretend they care about our privacy and use that as another reason to regulate it.

The last thing is the police and military won't be subject to the majority of regulations they make.

The main thing we can do, in my opinion, to have a say in the process is make sure people don't fly like idiots because the government is looking for excuses to regulate.

jones

I'd say it's more like they're getting hit over the head with reasons to regulate. When quads were buzzing around in parks they were cool. When they went flying into TFRs during wildfires "the government" is being put into a position that they pretty much have to do something. And let's not forget that "hobbyists and business" aren't the only interested parties. It's all the other aviation stuff that lives above 400' AGL that have been there forever, represent hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investment and have actual people on board that won't do well if their airplane eats a quadcopter.

Keith Young wrote: »

...because the government is looking for excuses to regulate.

Keith Young

Birds are a bigger threat, and are less fun to hobbyists and less useful to business.

In my experience they're always looking for excuses to regulate.

I'm fine with rules that keep drones out of immediate airport areas and things like this. The problem is it's hard to think of situations where government didn't over regulate. It's hard to think of situations where they don't try to turn an inch in to a mile.

xanadu

Maybe Parallax could get more positive press with the Elev-8?

Instead of stories of how small UAS are bad, more stories of how they're good!

jones

It isn't so much a matter of the government trying to make a bunch of new regulations. They really don't need to, the rule book is already quite thick enough. What most drone operators aren't understanding is that they are already regulated by the FAA, they just have an exemption IF they abide by certain rules. If they want to operate in some other way, the exemption goes away and now they're just part of the rest of the aviation/airspace system and that big thick rule book has to be followed. All other aircraft operators have been living with those regulations forever and when someone wants to put an aircraft - ANY aircraft - into that airspace system they are simply going to have to accept that those operations are going to be tightly controlled, just like the rest of the aviation community is tightly controlled.

Keith Young wrote: »

Birds are a bigger threat, and are less fun to hobbyists and less useful to business.

In my experience they're always looking for excuses to regulate.

I'm fine with rules that keep drones out of immediate airport areas and things like this. The problem is it's hard to think of situations where government didn't over regulate. It's hard to think of situations where they don't try to turn an inch in to a mile.

msrobots

I think one major rule should be that you need the consent of the property owner/renter to fly over it.

This is not so much a concern with conventional aircraft as they are not allowed to fly below some height anyways.

But model aircraft should fly below that height, to prevent meeting the conventional ones. As for all the plans for commercial delivery drones, they should just fly over roads used by cars/trucks. Exactly above the road just at say 200-300 feet or so. On the positive side they can use standard gps navigation for street address and the way to get there without flying over private property.

Like @Heater said correctly all the regulations for model aircraft are already covering quad copters too. As usual we need not more regulations, we just need to enforce the existing ones.

As for the self flying part we enter a new area here. Like with self driving cars/trucks. There I think more like @xanadu and see a need for some new regulations for safety and privacy reasons.

If the firemen here in Lake County had to stop flying their helicopters because of small visitors buzzing around them, I was quite angry. Stop flying, do not throw water on the fire. Too dangerous. Too much Hobby drones buzzing around in FPV mode.

And that laser pointer thing with pilots should be treated as attempted homicide. Multiple if passengers are on board. Because it is.

Mike

photomankc

I agree with msrobots (to a point). There is a fairly simple solution if the simple route is taken. Property owners don't own airspace but we need to define clearly what is 'airspace' and what is permitted uses of it, and enforce this. If I were to roll a tracked ROV onto your property to take photos and wander around nobody would try to claim that was not trespassing. Now, If this ROV hovers 8" off the ground is it now in "airspace" and allowed to transit with no recourse to me? What about hovering at 10' 50' or 200'? IIRC airspace has in some cases been altered from the old earth-to-the-heavens model.


I think that there are some simple rules to develop that would quell a lot of this:

1.) Transiting airspace above a certain altitude for point to point flights requires no change, this is the classic use for airspace and the reason it is not considered 'owned'.

2.) Loitering above a property at any altitude for the purpose of photography, video or audio should require permission of the property owner.

3.) Non-Licensed operation of any ROV restricted to something under a few hundred feet AGL and outside 2000 feet of any manned aircraft or X miles of an airport or heliport.

4.) Licensed operation as per FAR-AIM with some possible modification for this class of device.

Strictly enforce these rules and punish those that foolishly display the video evidence that they have violated them.


The problem is that most government 'regulation' schemes do little to make anything safer. They generally are little more than the collection of revenue for an agency and raising the bar to entry higher so the 'rabble' are excluded economically. The world of aircraft is one where I would agree the use of regulation is a necessary evil but this needs to be done in a reasoned and standardized way. Not haphazard patchworks of city, county and state entities. This a classic case of normalizing a problem. They are a type of aircraft, nothing more. Fit them to the existing framework and tweak that framework where needed to accommodate unique features.

jones

The governor of California just vetoed a bill that would've required landowner permission for drone overflight. The media reported the veto was because the bill was too simplistic and too limiting to legitimate operations.

photomankc

A balance is needed. Permission for every point-to-point flight is unworkable. Airborne survey seems fine to me as long as it's conducted in ways that are already permitted. The trouble always seems to come from having to try and force common sense into legal code. We all know a sat can take a picture at any time. A google van might see in our open window driving by. None of that is a problem that the laws needs to handle. However that is not the same as the google van driving by every 5 minutes and making a time-lapse video of me and my home. An overflight for imagery is not the same as hovering over the trees and taking video for 20 minutes at a time. What are the exact boundaries between street view and voyeurism? When does aerial video become harassment? Do you have a right to loiter over my property and film what you would otherwise have to trespass to view?

It figures. Who wants simple right? What we really need is a byzantine system of regs full of exemptions and special cases and licenses. Thus we can keep lawyers employed and maximize confusion over what exactly is allowed for more fines and fees.

Kyle M.

Great insights by all - I appreciate reading the various perspectives; helps to have a more balanced and holistic understanding of the topic.
An interesting perspective on the threat of UAS to full-sized aircraft.

When it comes to regulations, this is what a best-case scenario looks like to me (at the moment, my opinion is always changing). It's an attempt to balance safety ( of the public, other aircraft, etc) and privacy, while minimizing negative impacts on technological development, and commercial and hobby users. It's nowhere near a comprehensive list, and many parts are just "ideas." I would argue that most of this is common sense (and much of it is similar/identical/from AMA guidelines), and I recognize that some people will always ignore regulations, and enforcement is often very impractical, but having something officially on the books is known to increase compliance.

For Pilots without a UAS flight certificate, Flight of UAS Is Prohibited (unless special exception given by FAA):
-within 100 ft of all persons, unless specific permission for closer flight is granted
-at night*
-beyond line of sight*
-less than 100ft above private property w/o permission of the owner
-within 5 miles of airports, helipads, etc
-above 400 ft*
-for UAS with a takeoff weight exceeding 10lbs*

For Pilots with a UAS flight certificate, Flight of UAS Is Prohibited (unless special exception given by FAA):
(UAS certificate is a written examination to check understanding of airspace and UAS regulations, know how to understand and find NOTAMS, maybe radio communications, and possibly demonstrate ability to control UAS in a safe manner without external assistance (ie GPS), must be over 16 yrs of age, and must have insurance that covers UAS accidents)
-within 25 ft of all persons, unless specific permission for closer flight is granted
-less than 50ft above private property w/o permission of the owner
-above 400ft beyond line of sight and without a spotter
-above 100ft within 5 miles of airports, helipads, etc

Flight of UAS Is Prohibited for all pilots (unless special exception given by FAA):
-within 500 ft (horizontally and vertically) of any threatened, endangered, or otherwise protected species of animal (while Black Bears don't fall into this category, this inspired this restriction)
-When full-sized aircraft are operating within line-of sight or 1 mile, whichever is greater
-within all controlled airspaces
-within 3 miles of all airports, helipads, etc
-within 1/2 mile of emergency operations where there is a potential for air support
-less than 3 miles from all emergency air operations (ie wildfires, natural disasters, accidents w/ medivac, etc) with active or previous air support
-within 1/4 mile of prisons
-within 500ft of gov't buildings

UAS may not (unless special exception given by FAA):
- Carry pyrotechnic devices that explode or burn, or any device which propels a projectile or drops any object that creates a
hazard to persons or property (except smoke generators and model rocket engines)
-have a takeoff weight exceeding 55lbs
-have metal rotors, propellers, or blades
-be flown by an operator under influence of drugs or alcohol

UAS must (unless special exception given by FAA):
-be identified with the name and address of owner

Special rules/restrictions/exemptions (that I haven't yet thought through) may apply to
-flight at night
-flight within X distance of groups (stadiums, gatherings, events, etc) of X or more people
-research aircraft
-fully autonomous aircraft (automated RTH may fall into this category?)
-flight near bridges, other areas of significant "value"
-flight FOR emergency operations

*does not apply at approved flying sites (such as AMA flying sites)

Obviously, this is far from perfect, and while it may seem like a lot of rules, it's nowhere near as many as vehicles or full-sized aircraft have. Despite the laundry list of what you can't do, they are mostly special cases, so most flight has very little restriction. It's designed with a priority on safety. As with any regulation, this would all be for not unless there is a very rigorous education initiative. The FAA's new B4UFly app is a great start, but there is so much more to be done in this area. I'm not opposed to requiring all UAS sold in the US to include a printout or link to the rules. Share your thoughts!

Sources:
AMA Safety Code

xanadu

Seems reasonable enough to me. Below 100' will be tough within 5 miles of an airport though. I would say no flight at all in controlled airspace to the ground for class B, C and D airspace. I'm sure the B4UFly app has all of that in there. If a copter can fly 40mph and the pack lasts 10 minutes it can cover that 5 mile area. Or it can go up, above the 100' too. Worst case scenarios will always be looked at around airports. They call it the incident zone, and the rules are designed to overlap to create a buffer around the incident zone. When a crane puts up a boom within that same controlled airspace, they have to tell the tower, or FAA in the case of an uncontrolled airport. Even if the boom is 50' tall.

Of course that means people that live in cities wouldn't be able to fly in their own backyard, which isn't a great solution either. Unless they go with a small craft with a short flight time and makes it impossible for their copter to do any damage. This is the grey area where it's easy for me to say people shouldn't fly, but I'd hate to be in their shoes too.

Small UAS (sUAS) is a big category. The little micro-copters shouldn't be any part of this. I hope that a 2oz copter never falls under any of these rules. I like the mention of endangered species and animals, it's not just people, a lot of bird species go nuts when they see multirotors.

W9GFO

xanadu wrote: »

When a crane puts up a boom within that same controlled airspace, they have to tell the tower, or FAA in the case of an uncontrolled airport. Even if the boom is 50' tall.

Gonna have to call you on that one...

xanadu

Google "crane NOTAM". Based on experience I would say there is a civil requirement. It seems every other airport I land at has a NOTAM for a crane. I didn't want to start a debate on anything so let me rephrase it.

"Based on what I have seen, it seems required to file a NOTAM if you're operating a crane within the vicinity of an airport. If a crane 50' in the air is a threat to an airport, we can draw some parallels to how the airport feels about objects 50' in the air."

Edit: CFR Title 14 Part 77 http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?rgn=div5&node=14:2.0.1.2.9#se14.2.77_117

This is current at my airport KCRQ right now, and why I bring it up.

"EQUIPMENT ON BUILDING 3747 FT FROM DER, 59 FT AGL/421 FT MSL."

DER= Departure end of runway. If ATC cares about something 59' in the air, 3747' from the runway, I'm sure they care about other stuff at 59' in the air 3747' from the runway. In that case, you will file a NOTAM or advise the tower before flying a copter in the vicinity of an airport, if you go along with current regulations.