The future of drones depends on regulation, not just technology

MOVING bits around the internet is one thing; moving atoms around in the real world is something else entirely. In the two decades of the internet era, many world-changing technologies—web-publishing, file-sharing, online auctions, internet telephony, virtual currencies, ride-hailing—have raised new legal and regulatory questions. In each case, regulators had to work out the rules after the event: figuring out how libel law applies to the web, banning the sale of Nazi memorabilia, deciding whether Bitcoin is a currency, determining whether Uber drivers are employees or contractors, and so on. But drones are a different matter, because of the danger that flying robots pose to life and limb, and the existence of strict rules that govern the use of physical airspace. Their future will depend as much on decisions made by regulators as it does on technological advances. How will it play out?

Global policymakers are currently engaged in a “very interactive process of competition and co-operation”, says Greg McNeal, a law professor at Pepperdine University who advises the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on drone regulation and is co-founder of AirMap, a drone-software startup. Before the introduction of America’s “part 107” rules last August, Google’s X laboratory tested drones in Australia and Amazon in Canada, where the regulatory regimes were more accommodating. France’s relatively permissive regulation put it at the forefront of the agricultural use of drones. And in Britain a drone cluster has sprung up around an airport in Aberporth, in Wales, where drone-friendly regulations and facilities have been put in place. Now regulators in different countries are working closely together, attending each other’s meetings and learning from each other, while also competing to attract drone startups. “It’s very good for the industry, because every nation wants to be a leader,” says Mr McNeal.

The FAA’s part 107 rules, providing for certification of commercial drone operators, are generally seen as a model by other countries. These rules, a decade in the making, allow operators with a remote-pilot certificate (obtained by passing a test costing $150) to fly a drone for commercial purposes during the day, within line of sight, in uncontrolled airspace, and without flying over people who are not involved in operating the drone. Other countries have since followed America’s lead, and some are already going further: France and Switzerland allow some operation beyond visual line of sight, says Mr McNeal, and from 2018 Japan will permit it for delivery drones. In America the next set of proposed rules from the FAA, expected later this year, will deal with flight over people and remote identification of drones. Next year there will be proposals for the control of multiple drones by a single operator, “extended visual line of sight” operation over longer distances, and night operation. In 2019, says Mr McNeal, the FAA will propose its first rules governing flights without a visual line of sight, a crucial requirement for delivery drones.

Drone companies can already go beyond part 107 by obtaining special waivers from the FAA, provided they can show that the proposed operation can be conducted safely and meet some additional requirements. This offers a way to test new regulations before they are formalised. Such waivers impose additional safety requirements on drone operators: getting a waiver for night-time operation, for example, requires mounting a light on the drone that is visible three miles away, and providing night-flight training for operators. If all goes well, this could form the basis of a new rule, says Brendan Schulman, head of policy at DJI.

Flying over people raises additional problems. The FAA’s proposed rule, due out later this year, is expected to ask drone operators to show how they would mitigate the risk of injury to bystanders. The best way to do this, explains Mr Schulman, is to specify an acceptable level of risk, and then require dronemakers to show that their vehicles meet that standard. This might involve adding cushioning or parachutes to drones, or ensuring that they can still operate if some parts fail, or making them so small and light that they would cause little injury if they fell on someone.

An idea from Australia also deserves to be more widely adopted, he suggests: the creation of a special category for very small drones, allowing commercial operation without any certification. In Australia’s case this applies to drones weighing less than 2kg. Similar rules apply in Mexico and Canada, and are being considered in India and several European countries. In America all drones weighing less than 25kg are still treated the same. But broadly speaking, regulators are learning from a variety of approaches being tried in different countries.

Traffic lights in the clouds

To operate drones beyond visual line of sight and in large numbers, particularly in densely populated areas, will take not just extra rules but the establishment of new traffic-management systems, akin to air-traffic-control systems, to prevent drones crashing into each other or veering off course. DJI’s drones already support “geo-fencing” using technology provided by Mr McNeal’s company, AirMap. Its database of where drones are and are not allowed to fly is built into the software used to control them, working with satellite positioning to prevent an operator from flying a drone too close to an airport, for example. AirMap’s database can be updated in real time to keep drones away from unexpected events such as fires and other incidents.

But once drones are flying beyond their operators’ line of sight, a more elaborate system will be needed to track large numbers of them and ensure they avoid each other and stay away from manned aircraft, says Parimal Kopardekar of NASA’s Ames Research Centre. He is leading the development of a system called Unmanned Aerial Systems Traffic Management (UTM), an automated traffic-management system for drones. Existing air-traffic-control systems are operated manually, with human controllers co-ordinating with human pilots during flight, but that will not work for unmanned drones flying in much larger numbers. The UTM system will be automatic, with drones filing requests to use particular flight paths with a local data exchange, which then co-ordinates all the movements. “The regulator only sets the rules and defines the exchanges, so it’s a very different way of doing things from air-traffic control,” says Dr Kopardekar.

Last year NASA carried out a trial of its UTM architecture across the United States which revealed several challenges, notes Dr Kopardekar. In particular, it turned out that fixed-wing and multirotor drones respond very differently when they encounter rising columns of air, called thermals. Fixed-wing drones “bounce around quite a bit, by a few hundred feet”, says Dr Kopardekar, which means drones cannot be stacked too closely together. Route planning will, in short, require a detailed understanding of microclimates and of the behaviours of different types of drones. Building the necessary systems will take a few years.

Where are you going?

The FAA plans to introduce the first rules around UTM from 2019. Drones will need to be equipped with “sense and avoid” systems and long-range radio to communicate with each other and with the data exchange. That also poses a challenge, says Jane Rygaard of Nokia, a maker of network equipment, because existing mobile networks are designed to work with users on the ground, not in the air. Networks will have to be augmented with antennae that point towards the sky. This technology already exists to provide in-flight connectivity to aircraft, but will have to be extended more widely to take in drones as well.

And even once all these rules and tools are in place, not everyone will respect them. Some people may want to use drones for nefarious purposes. A range of anti-drone technologies is already being tested. Police forces in some parts of the world have trained birds of prey to attack small drones. Nets can also be used to trap them, either fired from bazooka-like launchers or dropped by other drones. America’s Department of Defence holds an annual event called Black Dart at which various anti-drone technologies are evaluated. “The biggest surprise to military folks was how difficult it was to combat small drones,” says Grant Jordan, the founder of SkySafe, an anti-drone startup, who worked on Black Dart a few years ago when he was in the air force. When the target is “tiny, very light and relatively slow”, the assumptions of traditional air defence are all wrong, he says.

Big laser systems worked pretty well, he recalls, but are expensive and complex. Israel has used Patriot missiles to shoot down fixed-wing drones operated by Hamas, Mr Jordan says. By contrast, his firm disables drones by intercepting their control signals and video feeds. Examining the radio traffic to and from a drone makes it possible to determine what type it is, track it and if necessary take it over to disable it or force it to land. Anti-drone systems made by SkySafe, and rivals such as Dedrone and DroneShield, are being evaluated for military and government use and to police airspace around airports, stadiums and prisons (to prevent smuggling of phones, drugs and other items to inmates). But it is unclear who has the legal authority to stop drones that pose a threat to public safety, says Mr Jordan. Existing air-safety rules aim to protect passengers in aircraft; for drones, “the logic of these laws falls apart.”

It is clear that the complexities of operating drones in large numbers have barely begun to be understood. As the first widely deployed mobile robots, drones already offer many exciting possibilities today, and no doubt other, as yet undreamed-of uses will follow in the future. Frank Wang, the founder of DJI, pictures people being followed around by tiny personal drones, like fairy sidekicks. Astro Teller of Google’s X laboratory foresees delivery drones that can come up with any item on demand. And passenger drones might some day act as magic carpets, whisking people across cities from rooftop to rooftop.

Drones make the extraordinary power of digital technologies physically incarnate. But because they operate in the physical rather than the virtual world, exploiting the many opportunities they offer will depend just as much on sensible regulation as on technological progress.