What’s Next for Your Newly Registered Drone?

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- A Brooklyn school teacher got five days of community service after he crashed a drone at the U.S. Open tennis tournament last month. No one was injured, but U.S. aviation officials have seen enough. Citing an increase in “close calls,” the Federal Aviation Administration announced plans on Tuesday to require registration of recreational drones. (Although a Christian Science Monitor analysis suggests the problem might be overstated.)

Matt Scassero, director of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Test Site at the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering, calls the move a paradigm shift. “They are going to treat these hobbyists as full-fledged aircraft operators,” he says.

Some unmanned systems clearly qualify as aircraft, such as U.S. Air Force Predator drones equipped with Hellfire missiles. But what about bottle rockets, paper kites or the radio-controlled TX Juice Sonar Copter, which loses any battle with indoor ceiling fans? Drawing lines between toys and aircraft quickly becomes tricky. “It’s a huge challenge because there are literally millions of these systems out there,” says Scassero, who studies the integration of drone technology with the national airspace system.

Regulators will announce details before Christmas, but first they must weigh several issues. At what point do homemade or home-modified systems require registration? Will pilot licenses or training be necessary? And if the policy is retroactive, how far back will it go?

Scassero says sorting out the regulation is key during the early stages of integration. “Regulations have to be put in place to allow some of the really cool and exciting things to develop,” says Scassero, who outlines a three-part process.

Phase One: Explore the Terrain

First, regulators must consider privacy, public safety, cybersecurity and other broad issues. Among these concerns, Scassero says privacy will be the easiest to address because laws already exist to protect individual rights. “We have lots of regulations and laws in place now that govern behavior, and that’s really what you need to regulate is the behavior, not the technology,” he says.

Hackers and terrorists pose bigger threats to drones and the air-traffic control systems that will emerge to support them. Solutions to these cybersecurity problems will require new technology. “How do you control the vehicles? How do you control autonomy? How do you protect high value targets like the White House? There is actual research going on right now to address these issues,” Scassero says.

During this period, U.S. policymakers will remain somewhat cautious. Operators must keep their drones within sight, below 400 feet and at least three miles from airports. They also must maintain manual control.

Despite the regulations, Scassero says drone operators have room to explore and innovate. “In the next year or two, I think it’s basically going to be a lot of these small drone users getting out there and figuring out what additional things they can do besides the basics of photography and simple surveillance,” he says.

On the engineering front, teams will work to improve sensors and algorithms for behind-the-scenes data analysis.

Phase Two: Replace the Humans

Gradually, drones will start to fly themselves. “When you talk about the five-year and beyond timeframe, that’s where I think you start to see real contribution of advanced technologies such as autonomous control, where you don’t have individual pilots accomplishing every movement of the aircraft,” Scassero says.

Instead, autonomous aircraft will figure out where they need to be, and then they will get themselves there.

Phase Three: Unleash the Power of the Network 

Further into the future, Scassero says drones will learn to work together on coordinated missions. Something similar happened when people started using personal computers in the 1980s and 1990s. The machines were great for word processing, data storage and gaming  — but the applications multiplied exponentially when large-area networks and then the World Wide Web came along.

“Collaborative control, where you have the vehicles actually talking to each other and to the ground control station, will allow you to accomplish much more complex tasks,” Scassero says.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST
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