A Brave New Sky: Building 'Public Trust' in Tomorrow’s 'Public Safety'

In today's rapidly evolving unmanned aircraft and systems technological landscape, drones are emerging as the transformative innovation edge for Public Safety.

As these new drones become more ubiquitous , and they seamlessly integrate into the fabric of our daily lives, the urgency for validated safety and performance data to mitigate operational risk, and increase public trust, intensifies.

Why Public 'Trust' matters in Public 'Safety'

Public trust is a cornerstone for the successful implementation of new technologies within any 'use case'. This is especially true for drones, largely due to their proximity to civilians, crucial events, and infrastructure. Earning the public's trust, hinges on the mitigation of 'operational risk' that has been validated, and the operations assurance of both reliable and safe missions.

The crucial need for Public Safety to mitigate 'Operational Risk' to realize 'Public Trust'

Imagine the perception created by a drone, that is monitoring a public gathering (in variable wind and weather conditions), that begins to exhibit erratic behavior. Beyond the immediate operational risk, such incidents tarnish the reputation of the entire drone industry and can deeply erode public trust.

Hence, the mitigation and validation of operational risk isn't just about operational efficiency. It's also about understanding the behavior and reliability of unmanned aircraft (with their systems) in real world variable flight and weather conditions; using real 'validated' behavior data that has been captured in a trusted repeatable testing environment.

Capturing trusted repeatable data within a testing environment, that can emulate real wind and weather ensures that captured validated data from real flight and weather conditions can serve as public trust-builders .

When the public realizes that drones are subjected to meticulous testing, based on real-world repeatable and validated data, public trust is most likely to improve. Also, educating the public about the behavior of unmanned aircraft in these variable conditions, with accompanying repeatable supporting data will help to humanize these "hovering Help-icopters" amidst public perception.

Ensuring 'Public Trust' amidst 'Public Safety' use cases

Drones are making inroads into diverse public safety arenas such as:

Law Enforcement Hostage Situations - Drones provide a safer and broader situational awareness, but any loss of signal, malfunction or failsafe procedure due to the absence of behaviorial data, can hamper decision-making, and potentially put lives at risk.

Search and Rescue in Extreme Terrains - Unmanned Aircraft offer unmatched advantages in scouting inaccessible terrains or 'exclusion zones'. However, their AI and related software systems must learn the flight behavior in these real world conditions, to avoid unpredictable disruptions as a result of variable environmental challenges. Validated data, captured with real environmental control levers, within a repeatable flight activity environment, can ensure that search and rescue operations can locate the missing or stranded, and mitigate most disruptions.

Flood Monitoring and Victim Location - Drones provide a bird's-eye situational view of "hot zones". To be effective, they need resistance against weather events, inclusive of water and humid conditions, to ensure rapid victim location and damage assessment.

Wildfire Surveillance - Firefighters rely on drones to gain situational awareness during wildfire spread, inclusive of: Rate of Spread (ROS), Fire Front, Spotting, Fire Intensity, Flame Length, Crown Fires, Surface Fires, Fire Perimeter, Firebreak and Containment. Drones operating near wildfires must endure high temperatures and other environmental challenges such as 'fire induced weather'.

Exploring Confined Spaces - In scenarios involving underground structures , drones are invaluable. However, they require precise navigation using sensors ( i.e., lidar ) to avoid obstacles in tight spaces while operating in a GPS denied environment.

Facing Mother Nature - The importance of wind & weather validated data

A drone's resilience to unpredictable wind and environmental conditions is paramount to realizing public trust. Many emergency situations are inherently disrupted due to the lack of behavioral data available to assess the operational risk on an unmanned aircraft mission.

Wind's Impact on Stability - Unpredictable wind conditions pose a significant challenge to the stability and operability of unmanned aircraft, especially during public safety missions. As drones rely on precision and steady flight patterns to capture data or provide surveillance, sudden wind gusts can distort their flight trajectory, compromise their camera stability, and, in extreme cases, knock them out of their operational altitude or even out of the sky. This instability not only jeopardizes the success of the mission (i.e., whether it's monitoring a crowd, delivering emergency supplies, or assessing disaster areas), but also introduces an additional layer of risk to the very public they aim to protect.

In a public safety context, a drone's inability to maintain stability in erratic wind conditions can lead to loss of critical real-time data, potential property damage, or worse, unintended injury to civilians below. Hence, ensuring drones can effectively navigate and stabilize themselves in fluctuating wind conditions is paramount to their efficacy and trustworthiness in safety operations.

The environmental challenge to realize desired mission outcomes - Rain, snow, and ice present a complex set of challenges for unmanned aircraft and their systems, particularly during public safety missions. Rain can interfere directly with a drone's visual sensors, obscuring its lens and reducing the clarity of images or video feed. This dampening effect compromises the drone's ability to provide accurate visual data, which is vital during surveillance or assessment operations.

Additionally, water ingress from rain can damage the internal electronics, hindering the drone's operational capability. Snow introduces another level of complexity. Apart from adding weight and potentially disrupting the aerodynamics of the drone, falling snowflakes can be mistakenly be picked up by GPS internal flight controller as fixed reference points, leading to skewed coordinates and imprecise navigation. Ice formation on the propellers or body of the drone can alter its flight characteristics , making it heavier and less responsive. In extreme cases, ice accumulation can even ground a drone entirely.

When public safety is at stake, these meteorological interferences not only jeopardize the mission's success but could also lead to unintended consequences, such as misjudging locations, missing vital information, or even causing accidents. Thus, understanding and preparing for the impact of these weather conditions on drone systems is crucial for their reliable deployment in public safety missions..

Intense heat, turbulence & aircraft stability - In scenarios like wildfires, drones are exposed to extreme temperatures, making an understanding of how intense heat, as well as associated thermal updrafts and turbulence, affect the aircraft's performance, stability, and safety.

The intense heat from a wildfire presents significant challenges for drones operating in its vicinity. Firstly, elevated temperatures can affect a drone's electronic components, potentially shortening the lifespan of these parts or causing sudden malfunctions. The heat can strain the battery, leading to reduced flight times or even battery failure. Moreover, the thermal currents created by the fire can create unpredictable wind patterns, making it difficult for drones to maintain stability and course. Additionally, the intense infrared radiation from the fire can interfere with the drone's sensors, especially if they are designed to detect infrared for imaging purposes.

Therefore, while drones offer a bird's-eye view of wildfires and are invaluable tools for monitoring and strategy formulation, the extreme heat conditions demand specialized testing and validation to help with design considerations that'll ensure that they perform optimally and safely, in the environment around them.

Unmanned aircraft and their related systems, are at the very edge of reshaping the public safety paradigm. As they influence and evolve into this new ubiquitous and autonomous Public Safety ecosystem, they also carry the weight of our trust. Their increasing ubiquity, however, amplifies the need for rigorous environmental testing and validation. The pivotal and very public moments that define them, hinge upon the reliability and integrity of the mission that they serve. As we harness the power of these unmanned 'Hovering Help-icopters,' establishing foundational success pillars of public trust and safety are imperative .

"When Public Safety takes to the skies, they harness the spirit of mankind's first flight, not just to soar, but to save"

WindShape envisages a future where Public Safety unmanned aircraft operations and their systems, run as reliably as a Swiss watch. WindShape is expanding with a new state-of-the-art UAS/AAM testing laboratory in Tulsa, Oklahoma to meet these testing, inspection, certification and validation needs.

The facility will house 8 specialized labs, each designed to test and validate different drone systems, such as a climate lab for assessing weather resilience, a propulsion lab to validate propulsion units, and two free-flight activity labs equipped with motion tracking cameras, GPS generators, and other digital tools that simulate a drone's flight mission. WindShape will be ready to test, inspect, certify and validate unmanned aircraft and their systems in this new facility early next year! You can read all about it here .