Rian Booyer
Instructor Rick Powell
CISS 320 ADE – Systems Analysis & Design II
24 June 2017
Commercial Use of Drones
Although the term drone over the past several decades has changed with the innovations that have gone into their design, the current definition and target of this paper is the Unmanned Arial Vehicle or UAV. The names between hobbyists and businesses change but the technology remains the same.
Drones come in approximately three types: fixed-wing, rotary-wing, and multi-rotor. Fixed wing consists of either a single winged design which resembles the Armstrong Whitworth A.W.52 or one that resembles hobby model airplanes with a fuselage and attached wings that resemble a standard commercial jetliner but with electrical motors. Rotary wing drones use a single rotating blade for lift and resembles a helicopter in design and use the Vertical Takeoff and Landing often referred to as VTOL. Multi-rotor drones are becoming more and more popular for hobbyists and business uses alike when you don’t need to cover a large area fast and need VTOL capabilities. The biggest benefit to a multi-rotor over a single rotor design is the shear stability of the drone while in flight and its ability to handle wind shifts and greater weight distribution techniques. With the stability of these drone’s mountable options of cameras, sensors, and other equipment can be attached (14).
Currently there is a new type of drone being developed which is a hybrid drone that converts from a multi-rotor drone into a fixed-wing drone and back again for use if longer flight times are needed by using the air for lift instead of all the rotors. An example of this type of drone is the SkyProwler being designed by a start-up business called Krossblade as a prototype to their flying car drone the Sky Cruiser (15).
There are many applications for drones in today’s world with people thinking up new ways to use them every day. A company called Unmanned Vehicle University has a listing of over three hundred possible applications and offer training to new pilots wanting to get their FAA flight certification.
Flight Restrictions for drones
As with many flying machines there tend to be many FAA rules and regulations that are there for individual’s safety. If you compare how long other flying technologies have been around: Hot air balloons – sine 1783, Air planes – 1903 to 1905, helicopters – 1939, drone technology is still in it’s infancy. The FAA is constantly redefining the rules and regulations regarding the use of drones in the United States for private and commercial operations. Touching on every regulation would be beyond the scope of this paper and could be a book in of itself, however, mentioning some of them will be necessary.
The first to mention would be the height limitations for private and commercial drones. Most all drones are by default restricted to four hundred feet above ground level. This is limited so that hopefully people will not be getting in the way of private maned aircraft that are flying overhead. This also leads to another restriction that if you are within five miles of an airport you have to contact the airport for flight clearance even if you are under the 400 feet limit. My assumption is that they wish to prevent further collisions with manned aircraft.
The drone’s weight is restricted to less than 0.55 pounds which includes the weight of any special attachments such as a camera; however, if your drone is over 0.55 pounds you are required to register your drone with the FAA and the drone must be marked with a registration number at all times. You may register a drone that is more than 0.55 pounds and under 55 pounds if you wish online through the FAA’s website however registry of a drone heavier requires a more thorough registration process (1).
To fly a drone for work or business you have a few requirements that need to be followed. First off you must be 16 years of age or older, pass an aeronautical knowledge test at an FAA testing center, obtain a “Remote Pilot Airman Certificate”, and be vetted by the Transportation Safety Administration. If an individual already holds a pilot’s license they can just go to the online training course offered on the faasafety.gov site to satisfy the aeronautical knowledge test required to fly.
Other requirements that are mentioned on the FAA’s website are: you must fly in class G airspace which is airspace that is not classified as controlled and below 14,500 feet above sea level (abbreviated as MSL and is not above ground level as the 400-foot restriction). You must keep the aircraft in a visual line of sight so that you don’t lose track of the drone, the 400 feet above ground level (AGL) applies, must fly during the day, must not fly over 100 miles per hour, must yield right of way to manned aircraft, you cannot fly over people at all, and the drone cannot be launched or flown from a moving vehicle (3). All of these restrictions can be waived however using the FAA’s Waiver request online at the FAA’s website (4).
Drone use in delivery – Skeet shooting with prizes
Currently the more popular stories of companies wanting to use drones for delivery are from Amazon.com, Domino’s pizza, and UPS. These three companies are currently developing, implementing or have put in place delivery systems. The main hurdle that these companies are facing are the FAA regulations mentioned earlier. Amazon is lobbying for less restrictive regulations in relation to business operations.
Amazon’s delivery system is referred to as Amazon Prime Air and promises deliveries in 30 minutes or less using the unmanned drones. They have development centers currently in the United States, United Kingdom, Austria, France, and Israel and currently have a private trial in the United Kingdom to test the actual safety and reliability of the system and according to Amazon will “bring[ing] us one step closer to realizing this amazing innovation for all our customers.” (4)
In November 2016 Domino’s pizza delivered their first pizza to a customer in New Zealand by drone with their partner Flirty who actually delivered the order. It was controlled using GPS navigation and “overseen by a team of drone experts and a qualified and experienced drone pilot.” Domino’s goal is to reduce delivery time to approximately 10 minutes after the pizza is finished so it is hot and fresh for their customers. They hail this as a major success and promise that it will create jobs for qualified individuals around the world (5).
Ups is also testing drone technology to aid in the delivery of packages. In February of 2017 UPS used a specialized all electric delivery truck as a launch platform for a delivery drone. According to money.cnn.com the driver “loads a package into the drone’s cargo bin. Then a section of the truck’s roof slides backwards, so that the drone can take off.” The process afterward is completely automated because once the drone takes off the delivery driver leaves to deliver other packages and then rendezvous at another location where the driver can load another package for the drone and repeat the entire process. UPS estimates that this will result in a savings of over $50 million a year and will benefit rural area’s the most (7).
Video and Photography
The use of drones for video and photography in the commercial market is currently the largest use so far. With drones equipped with cameras range from the super tiny toys bought at department stores to large commercial drones that can carry large single or multi-use cameras everyone is jumping on the bandwagon (8).
Today you might go to a sporting arena and see drones buzzing around above your head, more than likely they are taking video and images of the event itself. Journalists are using drones to get multiple angle videos on stories they are reporting on or even to get stories they wouldn’t normally get. Drones are being used as well as photography for weddings so they can zip around for truly unique wedding video’s and photo’s that will give the brides and grooms many amazing years of enjoyment. Drones are even being used in film making for specialized shots and replacing equipment that can cost in the millions to purchase while giving smaller studio’s the ability to produce higher quality films similar to the larger production studio’s.
Pocket-lint.com recommends that if you wish to take drone video and photography you should start out with a basic inexpensive drone because “You will likely crash the drone during your first few flight attempts, so you don’t want to invest a lot initially.” Once you mastered the flight of a smaller drone you can move up to larger drones that can carry better cameras and video recorders such as the DJI’s Phantom series which is quite popular as during research it seems to be mentioned on quite a few websites for hobbyists (8).
You need to be careful though if you are taking photos and video as part of a business due to the fact that if you don’t have the proper certifications and licenses the FAA has the right to fine you quite a bit for violating their rules.
One company that violated those rules, called SkyPan international, settled a fine by the FAA that originally sought approximately $1.9 million dollars in fines and fees for approximately $200 thousand dollars. SkyPan allegedly performed around 65 unauthorized flights between 2012 and 2014 without the proper certifications and waivers, permission from the FAA and air traffic control, and that the drones were not equipped with equipment to signal other aircraft of their presence. It is not stated how high the drones were flying at the time (9).
Mapping and Land Surveying
The use of drones has had a beneficial effect on mapping and land surveying. An article by waypoint.sensefly.com interviews four surveyors in their use of drones. All four had positive results from using drones in their work. Their accuracy in their measurements are improved, drones have replaced the need to use ground crews in many aspects of land surveying especially with topographical mapping over dangerous terrain, after all why risk injury to a ground crew when you can fly a drone over the area and take more accurate measurements without the risk. The mapping and survey projects also get finished rather quickly and cost less than standard mapping and surveying jobs using many employee’s (10).
I would think though land and mapping surveying wouldn’t be the only type of surveying that drones could be used for. If you think about damage control or maintenance on a skyscraper for example having individuals go up and down a skyscraper in a window washing platform can be very dangerous. Using a drone would negate that danger to these individuals and the drone could be equipped with specialized equipment that could detect structural damage a normal human might miss.
Internet Access
Several companies are experimenting with providing internet access to both city and rural areas with drones. These drones tend to be large fixed wing drones and can obtain a longer flight time with lightweight batteries that are recharged by solar cells attached to the wings and fuselage of the drone.
The two main developers over the past few years have been Google with their project Titan, and Facebook’s project Aquila. Both offered the possibility of wireless internet access to remote parts of the country and the world, however, Google’s Titan project was pulled in favor of their Project Loon which uses balloons near the edge of space to beam the internet access to the ground using LTE cellular protocols (16, 17, 18).
I for one, am looking forward to these types of technologies helping rural areas. In my state, much of the rural areas are still using dial up modems that can’t even surf the internet anymore with the bandwidth requirements and webpage designs being more complex than they were fifteen to twenty years ago. This makes it almost impossible to do anything on the internet. Many people use satellite internet or cellular internet but the data available per month and the latency are pathetic unless you spend hundreds of dollars on plans or equipment to try and extend the data usage.
Personally, I use around five hundred gigabytes of data per month on my home internet and would hate to be limited to only ten gigabytes. With these projects the hope of extending high speed internet might become a reality in the not so distant future.
A jack of all trades company
Several companies have now started using drones for damage surveying. One company called Sensefly has designed a series of drones specifically for surveying either the above-mentioned mapping and land surveying or other types of uses including surveying storm damage for insurance companies, GIS mapping, Humanitarian crisis tracking, animal tracking, agricultural use, among many other ideas and case studies they are working on (13).
It would take too long to go through all the applications that their company is developing but a few caught my eye. One of the uses would be for agriculture. One of the biggest uses they are designing their drones for is agriculture. Crops can be monitored by flying drones to calculate the yield of the crops, what the crops consist of (are they different plants that are there that shouldn’t be, damage from over watering or drought, blight conditions, infestations, erosion can be monitored by the drones, and even possibly even count how many plants are there and how they are propagating.
Another application they are developing a use for is environmental monitoring. Their drones can model glacial features to erosion monitoring (as in the agricultural solution) to counting and identifying species in an area (13).
The glacial monitoring and modeling amazes me because not only is it important but also hard to do. Usually planes and ground teams are used to go out and take measurements of the glaciers to determine if they are changing shape and how much ice is breaking off per year. The ground teams might be necessary for some things but hopefully they wouldn’t need to be next to the edge if a large section would break off.
Personal Ideas for commercial applications
Through my research, I have come across some unique drones that have caught my eye and has had me saying “hey that would be good for…” One of these drones is the Loon Copter that is being developed at the Oakland University Embedded Systems Research Laboratory. The purpose of this drone is as many drones starts out with a Vertical Takeoff and Landing platform (VTOL) but with a twist. The Loon can land in water and with the help of small buoyancy tanks actually convert to a micro submarine (11). When I saw the video on their site I thought “wow this could be used for water testing”.
In a city near me there is an old factory that was used to manufacture oil coolers, charged-air coolers and other cooling packages. Currently the company that operated the plant until March 2012 is under investigation for water contamination that forced the closure of a city drinking well. The company supposedly dumped waste into a lagoon that was contaminated with trichloroethylene, or TCE, which has leached into the soil, air, and water sources around (12).
This got me to thinking about the Loon and water testing. The Loon would be especially helpful if you needed to test water quality in the middle of a pond or lake by having the ability to fly to the center, landing on the water and collecting a sample from the area. The Loon isn’t designed for this but adding a collection bottle with a self-opening and closing aperture shouldn’t be much of a design challenge.
Let’s expand on this a little though, with the Loon’s capability to actually steer itself under the water, theoretically, an individual could take water samples from different depths comparing water say at 30 feet and compare it to surface water in the same area to help with research on how the lake “turns over” the water at certain times of the year (during the winter the cold water on top goes to the bottom and in the summer a similar occurrence happens to move the water from the bottom to the top based on temperature).
Hunting is another use I have thought of. In Missouri, it is illegal to use dogs during deer hunting season but currently Missouri has no laws concerning drones and uses during hunting season.
I have imagined being out in the woods with an earpiece in my ear and having my brother fly a drone at the upper limit while using a camera (infrared probably would be best) to actually track where the deer are going during that time of day to allow me to position myself to hopefully bag a deer.
Now please note I don’t do it just for the sport two deer can feed my family for an entire year in meat and it helps with my natural anemia since it contains more iron than regular beef.
Conclusion
Going through the complete list of drone uses could be a course or even a book in among itself. The uses are expanding day by day and the drones are evolving at an incredible rate due to advances of flight technology and miniaturization of equipment that, until recently, required much larger aircraft. Non-commercial applications are also expanding with local and federal law enforcement expanding their investigative techniques, search and rescue, crowd control, and many others by the use of drones.
One day I would like to be standing at the foot of Mount McKinley and fly a drone around to take pictures of its wonders, or maybe just happen to catch an image or video of the northern lights shining behind it.
Works Cited
- “Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Frequently Asked Questions”, faa.gov https://www.faa.gov/uas/faqs/,Accessed 15 June 2017
- “Getting Started”, faa.gov
https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/,Accessed 15 June 2017 - “Fly for Work/Business”, faa.gov https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/fly_for_work_business/,Accessed 15 June 2017
- “Request a Waiver/Airspace Authorization Small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS)” faa.gov https://www.faa.gov/uas/request_waiver/,Accessed 15 June 2017
- “Amazon Prime Air” Amazon.com,
https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Prime-Air/b?node=8037720011, Accessed 15 June 2017 - “Pizza-by-drone a reality with world-first customer deliveries in New Zealand”, faa.gov
https://www.dominos.com.au/inside-dominos/media/november-2016-pizza-by-drone-a-reality-with-world-first-customer-deliveries-in-new-zealand, Accessed 15 June 2017 - McFarland, Matt “UPS drivers may tag team deliveries with drones” money.cnn.com
http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/21/technology/ups-drone-delivery/index.html, Accessed 15 June 2017 - Betters, Elyse “Drone aerial photography explained: Here’s what it is and how to do it”, pocket-lint.com
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/130253-drone-aerial-photography-explained-here-s-what-it-is-and-how-to-do-it, Accessed 15 June 2017 - Jansen, Bart “Drone-photography company fined $200,000 by FAA”, usatoday,com https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/17/faa-drone-skypan/96671342/, Accessed 15 June 2017
- “Land Surveying With Drones – An Expert Discussion (Part 1)” waypoint.sensefly.com http://waypoint.sensefly.com/land-surveying-with-drones-1/, Accessed 15 June 2017
- “Embedded Systems Research Laboratory”, sites.google.com https://sites.google.com/a/oakland.edu/oar/, Accessed 15 June 2017
- Wheeler, Deanna “Modine Manufacturing to close its doors in 2012”,lakenewsonline.com http://www.lakenewsonline.com/article/20111103/NEWS/311039845, Accessed 15 June 2017
- https://www.sensefly.com/applications/overview.html?L=0%27A%3D0, Accessed 15 June 2017
- “UAV Types: How to Choose Yours?”, baatraining.com https://www.baatraining.com/uav-types-how-to-choose-yours/#, Accessed 15 June 2017
- Coxworth, Ben “SkyProwler combines a quadcopter and a fixed-wing airplane in one device”, newatlas.comhttp://newatlas.com/skyprowler-fixed-wing-quadcopter/36154/, Accessed 15 June 2017
- Metz, Cade “FACEBOOK’S GIANT INTERNET-BEAMING DRONE FINALLY TAKES FLIGHT”, wired.com https://www.wired.com/2016/07/facebooks-giant-internet-beaming-drone-finally-takes-flight/, Accessed 15 June 2017
- Kovach, Steve “Google’s parent company killed its solar-powered internet-drone program”, businessinsider.com http://www.businessinsider.com/google-shuts-down-project-titan-drone-program-2017-1, Accessed 15 June 2017
- “Balloon-powered internet for everyone”, x.company
https://x.company/loon/, Accessed 15 June 2017