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Drones in the Sky: Regulating the Flights of Small Unmanned Drones
A future where drones become common-place seems not so far away. Businesses like Amazon and Google are pushing hard to realize that future. Amazon envisions that in just ten years there will be hundreds of thousands of drones flying in the sky delivering their packages. But before that can happen regulations for how drones can be used is needed. There have been recent incidents where drones have crashed into houses, in national parks, and even on the White House grounds.
Parimal Kopardekar, manager of NASA’s Safe Autonomous Systems Operations project, said that “the sky could become increasingly crowded as personal and commercial uses of unmanned aircraft drones become more popular.”
Amazon’s proposals for airspace restricts airplanes to above 500 feet with a 100 foot buffer space below that. From 200-400 feet commercial drones equipped with GPS, traffic management and collision avoidance technologies would be able to fly. Drones in that airspace may travel as quickly as 70 miles per hour. Below 200 feet both commercial and non-commercial drones could fly, but at much lower speeds. Drones in that airspace would typically be non-commercial and used for tasks like surveying and video. Areas around airports would be no-fly zones for drones.
NASA’s plan is that drones would be assigned flight paths from central computers. Amazon is calling for individual drones to be able to set their own flight paths. But both plans would require drones to have collision-avoidance and traffic-management technology.
Googles, Dave Vos, said that “there’s this fundamental enabler called the airspace management system. We have to build one, and we think everybody that wants to build one should be able to build one.”
