The Drones Are Coming...
The drones are coming and they’re bringing your medications, groceries, and Christmas gifts. Drones have made huge steps forward within the past few years. For example, UPS recently received a Federal Aviation Administration certificate that allows them to make limited drone deliveries. These deliveries are soon to be your medications, seeing as CVS has partnered with UPS to begin using their drone services in the near future. While we may soon see the skies filled full-scale commercial delivery drones, there are still several hurdles to overcome before becoming a commercial-scale enterprise.
Drone technology, like all of the other innovations that pose some sort of threat to human lives, has many problems to solve before it can become a part or our economy and airspace. Drones will be held to the same safety requirements that other aircrafts, including airplanes, must adhere by before they can fly over populated areas. Just to give an example of the bar that drone technology will have to meet, in commercial aviation, a critical system failure is only allowed to occur once in one billion hours of flight time of the aircraft. With this standard in mind, drones have quite a way to go.
As of today, the majority of drone production has been for consumer use with commercial use just recently entering the seen. These hobby drones haven’t proven to come even close to the standards required by regulators. The average drone used for recreational purposes fails within a matter of months of occasional use. This will pose an even greater challenge with bigger delivery drones, requiring even higher reliability. In order for these larger delivery drones to transport bulk shipments or heavy equipment, they will need to be almost the same size as the drones used by the military. These drones can weigh as much as 5,000 pounds. Drone manufacturers and operators will therefore need to get their drones certified as airworthy, just as large commercial airline companies do.
As if these weren’t enough hurdles, the lack of certification standards for UAVs makes this whole process even more challenging. Since drones do not have a pilot like a typical aircraft, there is no one to watch-out for obstacles that are or may appear while in the air. This is why there has been a regulation set that requires drones to stay within eyesight of their controller, something that will obviously make commercial-scale drone businesses impossible. Drones will have to find a nearly fail-proof way to to detect and avoid colliding with obstacles or other moving objects. Amazon has taken several steps toward solving this problem by creating a flight management system that will allow drones to utilize sensors and wireless communication in order to avoid other drones or objects. This system will then have the drones adjust their flight plans in order to avoid collision. This is the drone equivalent to the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance Systems that commercial aircraft are required to have.
Despite all of these obstacles, drones have already proven to solve large logistical problems in less densely populated areas of the world. For example, drones in Rwanda and Ghana are carrying blood, medications, and vaccinations to rural hospitals. In order to solve these dilemmas and bring drones into the commercial space on a full scale, we are going to need programmers, software developers, and pilots with the skill, knowledge, and innovation that is currently lacking. Our youth will be filling those positions, so it is essential that we provide them with all the skills and knowledge they will require to bring drone technology to places we never thought possible. Here at STEAM Drones, we have made this process as effortless as possible for schools, educators, and parents. STEAM Drones and DroneBlocks have joined forces to design and implicate a curriculum for K-12 students around the world. We also provide teachers with all of the equipment that they need in their classroom (drones, software, etc.) as well as all of the necessary training so that they can accurately teach their students. If you’re ready to prepare for our future, click here to contact us and learn more about our initiative.