Thesis rough draft
Chris Lipps
ENG 102
Andy Korman: Instructor
August 2017
Drones - past, present and future
Drones have a rich history. The type of drones and how they are used has advanced as radio control and aerospace technology has matured. Most recently the birth of the quadcopter has made drones conducive for commercial use. The commercial sector has begun using drones for movement of merchandise, security, news reporting, racing and other businesses. While other countries are embracing this wave of commercialism, America is lagging as drones do business around the world. Slow movement of the US government to mirror their counter parts in other nations, and expedite drone regulation, have allowed other countries to reap financial benefits in their economies. Government and regulatory entities in Europe and Asia are working with companies to allow businesses using drones to develop. And although some of those companies are also ones who wish to do business in the United States, many entrepreneurs in the US are eagerly awaiting regulation in the United States to be finalized. The United States has always been a leader in the world when it comes to scrutinizing and taking the utmost care when it comes to safety when regulating new technology. However, the debate is brewing that America needs to get with the times and finalize regulation so businesses and hobbyists can enjoy this flying wave of the future.
Military History of Drones
Drones have been used for many years but mostly unseen to the public eye as they have been used in military applications. In 1849 the Austrian military release balloons armed with bombs over their adversaries in Venice. The bombs were equipped with half hour timed fuses and were timed to be flying over Venice when the bombs would drop on Venice. This was one of the first recorded uses of unmanned craft used by the military. The first use of aerial reconnaissance photographs was recorded during the Spanish American war in 1898. American military fitted a camera to a kite to view and prepare an attack plan against a Spanish military base (Shaw). In World War I, 1914, the aircraft of the British Royal Air Corps were equipped with cameras and sent to fly above the trenches built by Germany. Over 19,000 aerial photographs were taken. These photographs where then stitched together and viewed with stereoscopes to formulate a battle plan to attack the trenches. The photographs were key in defeating the Germans in the battle of Somme (Wakefield). Also in World War I the United States began hooking up unused airplanes with autopilot systems. The planes would be used as "aerial torpedoes and dropped in cities of the enemy. By World War II, 1939, drones were created that could take the type of pictures that were used in the battle Somme.
With the success of the Somme battle photographs that was key in winning that battle, it became clear to various countries' military forces that the use of drones to gather aerial surveillance was most valuable in fighting and gaining a strategic advantage. This would spawn the next generation of unmanned aircraft vehicle. The sixties and the Vietnam war used mostly the American engineered Lighting Bugs surveillance drones. The United states flew hundreds of missions using the Lighting Bugs. As the US began to look further into the development of satellites and high-resolution imaging in the 70s and 80s, Israel took the lead in drone development. The Israel's sold several drones they engineered to the Pentagon including the Pioneer drone (Cole). This drone proved very useful for surveillance missions and would be used the US Military for decades to come.
The next wave of military drones was to be engineered after 9/11. The Predator drone would be used for surveillance but later to become the first armed drone. These drones were initially tested by releasing bombs from a location on the ground below the drone. But further testing proved successful when bombs were released using satellite technology in space to fire missiles from many miles away. These drones could take surveillance and fire guided missiles at targets on the ground (Cole). The future of military drones is becoming both larger and smaller. Large UAVS have the capability to fly with larger munitions and can fly as the wingman to manned aircraft. Small UAVs that have longer flight length capability are being used to find opposition in caves and hard to navigate mountains (Pappalardo). Drones have become a mainstay of military in all countries. The type and uses for them continue to develop as computer and radio technology advances.
Civil History of Drones
Although drones have been mostly utilized in military applications over the last century, the beginnings of drone technology were engineered by civilian engineers. Nikola Tesla was an inventor living in the United States and participated in an Electrical Exhibition in 1898. What Tesla offered at the exhibition was what those who had never seen this type of technology would decree as magic. In the first application of radio waves in history, Tesla presented a tiny ship that he could flash its lights on and off and maneuver about in a pool of water. He did this without visible connection between the boat and the controller he used to navigate the boat. This presentation was the birthplace of modern robotics and what Tesla termed "teleautomation". The press began calling Tesla's remotely controlled boat a wirelessly controlled torpedo. Tesla, on the other hand, insisted his invention was not one necessarily with military application in mind yet a self-realization of mind and body as an automation. Automations at the time were using external stimuli and reacting to situations. Telsa had found a way to allow an object to use "borrowed mind" and use orders from a distant and intelligent operator (Turi). According to Margret Cheny's Tesla: A Man Out of Time, when asked about the boat's potential as an explosive-delivery system, Tesla retorted, "You do not see here a wireless torpedo; you see here the first of a race of robots, mechanical men which will do the laborious work of the human race" (Turi). Tesla had a vision that correlated his own body as an operator, his brain, working his body parts to navigate the world around him. Prior to the boat presentation Thomas Edison had done work with torpedoes that were controlled by wires. The torpedoes would be controlled on shore and propelled towards opposing military payloads coming in from the sea. Also prior to Tesla's presentation was work by W.J. Clark in which toy boats were blown up by wirelessly detonating floating mines with radio waves. Again, with military implications. But Tesla's vision was not one with military entirely in mind. His vision was the use of machine to help man do tasks while a man could remotely control the machine. Although this invention was envisioned as a non-military concept, it would be many years before this type of man and machine collaboration would be utilized in civilian society.
Drone Utilization in the World Today
The United States is falling behind other countries in taking advantage of allowing drone usage by commercial companies. Along with this missing business potential in the United States also comes the loss of economic benefits these companies would provide to our economy. Drones are prevalently being used commercially in countries outside the United States. European and Asian businesses are already allowed to do business with drones in their countries and are navigating the unknowns of this relatively new market. The push of businesses that have many uses for drones, has caught the ear of government officials and regulative entities in these countries. The less restricting officials of these countries have worked with these businesses in hopes to foster this technology and boost sagging economies. Some of these companies are ones that also do business in the United States. These companies would like to expand their growth of drone technology into the US.
Commercial use of drones in Asian countries, particularly China, have proven successful. Business and government agencies in China, Singapore, India, Japan and Malaysia are currently flying drones for business purposes in their countries. The governments in these countries work closely with these businesses to overcome regulatory obstacles.
In Singapore drones have boosted the food and beverage industry as they are being used as flying waiters. The food and beverage industry has had trouble getting employees for these jobs. The government of Singapore has offered tax relief for businesses using machines, which drones fall into this category (Liu). During the National Day Parade in Singapore, the new crowd favorite were drones. 300 unmanned drones created stunning color images in the night sky. The drones which are specifically created for these displays, are built by the American firm Intel Corp.. The drones can create over 4 billion color combinations as each are equipped with built in LED lights. The display was the highlight of this year's Singapore National Day Parade (Baker).
The Chinese government in Beijing has an initiative called Made in China 2025. Companies who are making efforts to automate and innovate in their production processes are provided with special grants, loans and investment. Once such company that is participating in this initiative is JD, the equivalent of Amazon in China. JD has been able to use a slightly different model of package delivery than that which Amazon intends to use in the United States. The Beijing government has set up fixed routes that the JD's drones can fly. These routes lead to drop points in rural villages where special landing pads have been created. When the drones arrive at the drop points, special courier's delivery the packages to the customers. The drones provide a much-needed boost to delivery times in China due to a poor road systems in underdeveloped rural areas. Many of the roads in the areas are dirt and winding mountain roads. The drones provide relief to what would take drivers, and the costs of transportation, six times more than the drone assisted deliveries (Aleem). JD boasts they have the fastest delivery system of any on line store in the world. JD is also pursuing using large capacity drones to take food from rural farms to urban warehouses.
Commercial use of drones in Europe is also ahead of the United states. Europe does not have the tight restriction of limiting drone users to their line of sight. Allowing pilots of drones to fly beyond the visual line of sight (bvlos) is the major difference between regulations in the United States and regulations in Europe. By allowing construction industries to fly bvlos, companies can use drones in mapping and maintaining large scale transportation infrastructure and agriculture. Farmers use drones to monitor their crops daily, or pay a company who specializes in the service. Also in Europe, drones are used to monitor large swaths of protected land that may be inaccessible by land vehicles. Drones in Europe are used to regularly monitor and maintain these wilderness lands. And although wildlife management is utilized by drones in the US, because of the bvlos restrictions, only projects that are monitored locally can occur. By being able to utilize drones remotely covering long distances, wild life management in Europe can make daily fly overs of wildlife as needed. Wildlife management groups in Europe have much more detailed observation data and can react to situations requiring human interaction much quicker. Drones used for surveillance of warehouses and electrical infrastructures are beginning to become common place in the US and Europe, providing drones in the US use drones in sight. However, use of drones for long range surveillance of border areas is maintained by drones in Europe at a significant savings as compared to manpower deployed to travel border areas. Drones are also being utilized to monitor ocean shipping lanes off the coasts in Europe watching for refugees who may need assistance. Additionally, because European regulations are more flexible with regulations regarding larger drones, companies are in business in Europe utilizing drones that weight several hundred pounds. Tasks for these drones include material logistics, movement of larger materials from warehouse to warehouse, and long-range crop spraying drones. In both instances, utilizing drones for these tasks provide large cost savings as compared to the cost of manned vehicles or craft to perform the same tasks. Lastly, drones in Europe are already delivering packages from on line sales. Amazon is currently doing testing in England and an Israeli company, Flytrex, has partnered with the Ukraine government to deliver the post (McNabb). The collaboration between Flytrex and the Ukrainian government is an example of the willingness of the government to foster growth of the drone industry.
Comparative to much of the rest of the world, the current commercial drone landscape in the United States is very limited. Although businesses are doing business in the US, drone usage is limited by the tight regulations of the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA is working on understanding what regulations could be lessened and those that may need stricter rules however, the proof that America is falling behind the world in amount of businesses utilizing drones is clear to see. As American businesses grow impatient with the slow change in regulations in the United States, the same companies are conducting business or testing the market overseas. Amazon is utilizing the less regulated skies in other countries to test and do business with hopes the US will soon allow the same use of drones over US skies. And, although many American companies are participating in the market not only in the US but also worldwide, the opportunity that awaits and its positive impact on these businesses, is predicted to be huge.
Creating Drone Regulation in the United States
Drone usage in the United States is currently alive and well as far as the FAA will allow. Since 2014, sales of drones eclipsed $790 million in 2016 and is expected to surpass a billion and a quarter in 2017. In the last 15 months alone more than 770,000 drone registrations have been filed. That number represents an increase of 100,000 in the past three months alone. A representative of the Federal Aviation Administration Micheal Huerta, speaking at the Consumer E0lectronics Show in Las Vegas this past March expressed how large the growth of people and businesses utilizing drones has been. "We're ushering in a new age of American Aviation: the unmanned aircraft era. And its moving at a quicker pace than anything we've ever seen before." (Yurieff). Although this new age in aviation is currently happening unseen by many people, Amazon has made news over the last 4 years promising delivery of their packages will be done by drones soon. It may not be long before seeing drones flying in our skies will become a regular occurrence.
This new era of aviation is getting off to a rocky start in comparison to what is currently happening with drones in other countries. Although the FAA is collaborating with NASA, entrepreneurs and educational institutions testing drones with the goal of creating safe legislation, many drone's users are limited by the current regulations. Most notable is the regulation banning drones flying beyond the pilot's line of sight. Drones will be very versatile in our society. Drones will take on tasks such as delivery of items many miles away as the drones can be piloted by computer and video feed. Limiting drones in this manner has stalled plans of many businesses intending to fly drone's great distances as they do their work. Another limitation that is hindering business opportunity is limitations on the size of drone that can fly in the US. The FAA has also kept a tight leash on this situation and has only issued about 300 waivers to companies such as Union Pacific Railroad, Intel, Walt Disney Parks and Time Warner's CNN HBO units and who can use drones beyond the current scope of their regulations.
Part of the problem with America lagging the world in commercial use of drones is the lack of ability of the FAA to keep up with the pace of the wave of drones into our society. The FAA has sovereign rule over federal airspace which currently includes all airspace over the US. This airspace has proven to be complicated over the years. When drones became popular over the last 4 years, the complicated federal airspace became much more complicated very quickly. In response to this wave of popularity the FAA has attempted to enact regulations. These regulations take many years to write and implement. The FAA had set a deadline, 2015, as to when they would have regulations written and implemented regarding commercial drone use. That deadline has come and gone and as of today the FAA has only proposed regulation but nothing has been finalized.
The need for regulation has become an obvious priority as drone's users have been seen flying in violation of the 400 feet height requirement and cases of voyeurism are erupting. In response to these, and other violations, the FAA has issued "advisory circulars" and "policy statements" (Koebler). The FAA has also said the use of commercial drones is illegal even though there is no regulation that states that is the case. The FAA has also issued cease and desist orders to companies using drones commercially citing their drones as "illegal". The orders were later tossed out by an appeals court and still later the FAA began advising pilots to ignore the cease and desist orders.
Unfortunately, the hard facts are that the current drone regulations rule out most commercial applications. The regulations include that drones cannot fly over people, they cannot fly faster than 100 mph and, the most prohibitive to commercial applications, drones must be flown within the line of sight of its pilot at all times. These proposed regulations individually do not seem to rule out commercial use of drones completely, but when they are combined, rule out many commercial uses for drones that businesses are fighting with the FAA to relax. Businesses in agriculture who would fly drones great distances to monitor crops are prohibited. Also excluded are businesses in urban development in which drones are flown at very high altitudes to map development projects from high above, and real estate drones that help contractors survey sky scrapers' hard to access exteriors. Some have called the current state of regulations in the US, or lack of, absurd. Businesses are becoming impatient with the FAA. Paul Misener, VP at Amazon, expressed this urgency in an interview stating, "The FAA needs to begin and expeditiously complete the formal process to address the needs of our business, and ultimately our customers" (IV). Although this quote was from over 2 years ago, the FAA has yet to implement hard regulations/laws and adjust the rules to embrace the new wave of commercialism using drones. The commercialism that will lead to a very positive economic impact that other countries are experiencing by embracing drone businesses.
Despite the criticism being unleashed by the public and business leaders in the US, the fact is that the FAA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are working towards making our airspace prepared for the substantial number of drones that will be inhabiting our skies. It is estimated that by the year 2020 7 million drones could be flying over US airspace (Masunga). The urgency of the need to expedite the creation of regulations is not lost on our US government. The United States has always been a leader in the world when approaching regulation of new technology that will be available to the public. The issues of drones flying in US skies over the public is a complicated issue with multiple safety and privacy issues to be addressed. The US government is formulating an appropriate larger group of agencies and collaboration of administrations in response to the urgency of drone regulation.
Of note is the development of an air traffic control system for drones, something that no other country is working on. The focus of this air traffic control would be the lower altitude airspace, the airspace below 400 feet that drones will occupy, and currently uncontrolled by air traffic control. Scenarios NASA are simulating are farmland surveys, search and rescue operations, railway inspections, video surveillance and package delivery. The control system proposed would not be a system like the manned current air traffic control system for commercial aircraft in which verbal communication between controllers and pilots occur from the ground to air. However, this system is being designed as an unmanned control system using cloud technology. NASA also is recognizing and working with businesses that have commercial drone interest. The businesses are already working on software for air traffic control for their drone systems. At the conclusion of the latest testing this past June, the NASA coordinator of this national drone air traffic control campaign stated, "Using the power of collaborative innovation to work alongside many committed government, industry and academic partners, NASA is fostering commercial sector investment in US technology, and enabling the agency to lead research and development using cloud-based Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) research platform." (Gipson). The large scale of introduction of drones for commercial use into US air space is a task that our government recognizes will need a larger organization internally to resolve. NASA also recognizes that inclusion of resources from those who are testing for their business purposes and student and educators at the college level will expedite the process.
Another area of focus that NASA is collaborating with partners on is the ability of drones to detect and avoid other aircraft. The safety of the public below drones is imperative before commercial use of drones will be allowed. Like research and testing with driverless vehicles, drones must have the capability to know the environment and traffic around them and respond appropriately. Two recent tests of drones at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California has attracted international attention. Invitees included officials from the International Civil Aviation Organization. In these tests which are currently continuing through August of this year, NASA flew its own Ikhana remotely piloted aircraft. The aircraft will be subjected to 21 different intruders during its airspace scenarios, each different in nature. During these flights, NASA officials, participants on the ground and those viewing the tests will see control panels that pilotswill use while navigating the UAV. The control panels will provide pilots alerts and information on how to navigate to respond to the intruder (Conner). These navigation alerts will be provided by computer controlled cloud technology and the onus of responsibility to respond to these alerts would solely be on pilots of the drones. The goal of NASA and its participants in these tests is cost effective and responsibility driven technology. The looming questions with this type of technology is just how much can government let go of the leash when allowing the private sector to be the governors of UAV flights. Less government involvement is desired yet responsibility and a governing force is certainly required for the sensitivity and imminent danger of craft in the skies above the public.
These factors, traffic control of UAVs in the sky and the ability of UAVs to see and react to the environment around them, are the foremost of the many factors that must be considered before drones are released to fly in the skies above the US. With the resolution of these hurdles, some of the other concerns will naturally fall into place such as height restrictions, drone sizes and where different classes will be able to fly and possible fly zones for drones. The US is responding to the urging of US businesses and the world has eyes on these tests as they progress.
Commercial drone usage in the United States is of utmost importance of many who see this as a new revolution in industry. Investors, who see the positive impact on revenue of businesses who can use drones in other countries, feel the US is ripe for their businesses to grow in using drones in many applications. The history of drones in the military is rich and is also changing quickly as technology that makes drones more versatile emerges. The emerging technology will also be useful for drones in the commercial sector. And with this aviation revolution comes many safety and privacy issues that must be resolved before drones are allowed to freely fly in the skies above the United States. As our government tries to respond to the situation, businesses in the US are becoming increasingly more impatient as FAA deadlines pass without firm regulations. Nicola Tesla commented back in 1898 "The world moves slowly, and new truths are difficult to see" (Turi). Tesla's quote from over a century ago is very evident when considering drones and the impatience of men who eagerly await opportunity to introduce them to the skies above the United States. The many circumstances involved with this new technology should be taken into thoughtful consideration, rather than impatiently plunging into what could result in disastrous accidents, large scale problems and legal battles.
Works Cited
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