Law changes mean uncrewed aerial vehicles aren't just for the military any more – civilian uses are taking off, too

Keeping an eye on Antarctic moss (Image: TerraLuma/UTAS)

Editorial: “High time to welcome the friendly drones“

THE hobbyist was testing the camera on board his small uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV), when he spotted it: a creek in Dallas, Texas, running red with blood.

He’d captured a picture of a stream of animal blood flowing north away from the Columbia Packing Company’s meat-processing facility. Acting on the visual evidence, investigators monitored the plant before raiding it last month. The company may now face criminal charges from local, state and federal authorities for polluting city waterways with a gory mix of pig’s blood and toxic chemicals.


Such a story may crop up more often as UAVs fall in price and become simpler to use. What is traditionally thought of as a military technology is about to change the lives of private citizens as well as big businesses.

For the moment, the law stands in the way. The US Federal Aviation Administration allows for recreational use of remote-controlled air vehicles, but the Columbia Packing case blurs the line because the UAV became a surveillance tool. Commercial use is also illegal – last week real estate agents in Los Angeles, California, were ordered to stop using helicopter drones to shoot aerial movies of properties they are selling. “Although the FAA allows hobbyists to fly model airplanes for recreational purposes, that authority does not extend to operators flying unmanned aircraft for business purposes,” the Air Division of the Los Angeles police department reminded the California Association of Realtors.

That could soon change. The FAA plans to unveil a new set of rules this year that will cover the burgeoning interest in flying commercial and private UAVs.

And on 9 February, the European Commission’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Panel will meet in Brussels, Belgium, to agree on the key flight rules and technologies essential for commercial UAVs to operate safely in civilian airspace. This will include discussing technologies such as collision avoidance systems, says Mike Lissone of Eurocontrol, the pan-European air traffic control organisation.

The moves, which are expected to go into effect between 2013 and 2015, will likely mean hundreds of people apply for permission to fly UAVs, predicts Peter van Blyenburgh of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (UVS), a global trade association based in the Netherlands.

What van Blyenburgh wants is for aircraft weighing up to 25 kilograms to take to the air without the owner needing permission to fly it. The craft will probably have to remain in line-of-sight of the controller, but that shouldn’t be a problem, he says. It’s only when the drones get much heavier, and present a greater safety risk, that he expects they’ll need expensive sensors so they can automatically avoid other air traffic.

Meanwhile, UVS members are investigating how drones could become vital tools in many fields, from helping police track stolen cars to assisting emergency services in crisis situations such as fires, floods and earthquakes, to more prosaic tasks like advertising or dispensing fertiliser from the air.

Drones can help police track stolen cars and assist in crises such as fires, floods and earthquakes

This is already happening in some out-of-the way places, where air traffic problems are unlikely. In Brazil, for instance, small helicopter UAVs carrying 12-megapixel cameras are surveying soybean and sugar cane.

“They fly grid patterns, using algorithms to stitch the photos together to identify tracts where they have to resow, optimising growth on the fields,” says van Blyenburgh.

In Antarctica, meanwhile, a team from the Australian universities of Tasmania and Wollongong, New South Wales, have been using two types of UAV helicopters, one remotely steered and another that can fly between GPS waypoints on autopilot. The drones are helping the team create 3D maps of moss beds, whose health may be an indicator of climate change.

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a fixed-wing UAV made by Gatewing of Ghent, Belgium, (pictured right) has been taking aerial photographs of Easter Island, with a resolution down to just 5 centimetres – Google Earth can only manage several metres in most places. Archaeologists are using the images to produce the highest resolution survey of the World Heritage Site ever made.

Germany’s renewable energy industry has turned to drones to solve a skills shortfall, says Lissone. With nearly 22,000 wind turbines in the country, he says energy firms do not have enough skilled people who can climb them to perform close visual inspections of the turbine blades, which can become delaminated after lightning strikes, for instance. So small UAVs, such as those made by Microdrones of Siegen, east of Cologne, are doing the job instead.

Across the border, France’s TGV trains travel from Paris to Lyon at 320 kilometres per hour – a super-high speed that can upset the pebble bed supporting the rails. To find the dents that need to be flattened out, a helicopter drone travels alongside the track and films it with 3D stereoscopic cameras. It is easy to spot serious undulations that need attention by watching the footage.

With UAVs already proving their worth, the future looks bright for uncrewed aviation as the upcoming regulatory changes enable still more uses to be dreamed up. But operators should not expect a free-for-all, says Lissone. “The key here is safety. Unmanned aircraft, regardless of their size, can only fly in civil airspace if they are as safe, or safer, than piloted aircraft are now.”