There's a new 92-page report from the National Research Council on the next research priorities to allow drones to safely operate in the national airspace. (USA Today reports on it here). It's available, free to read, here.
I couldn't help but notice this passage, on page 64, regarding DIY Drones and open source UAV projects such as ours. Do you agree with this assessment?
There are also positive indications of coordination in the recreational, or hobbyist, unmanned
aircraft community. There are many Web sites that share of open-source software and hardware, with
open forums that enable widespread sharing of ideas, techniques, and methods for achieving IA
operations of small, amateur-built UAS. However, these activities are largely undertaken without
consideration of issues such as certification and thus are generating designs and approaches that might be technologically advanced but that could be certified for proper, approved operations in the civil aviation system only with great difficulty, if at all. Since these systems are not verified or validated for such qualities as robustness, completeness, and fault tolerance, the ultimate contribution of this sector to the advancement of IA systems in the NAS remains to be seen.
Comments
I think that this comment points out the very real need to separate at this entire endeavor into two separate fields.
Those endeavors / vehicles / operating conditions that actually require being :"approved operations in the civil aviation system" and those that don't.
The Australians already seem to very reasonably be trying to follow this approach.
And if we don't do something similar it is just going to turn into a giant boondoggle where small enterprise will simply get locked out by the completely prohibitive costs and effort involved to operate within the "rules".
We are already bootstrapping in under existing model aircraft legislation and if we didn't have that they would simply erase our entire endeavor.
Basically any new thing has to completely justify itself whereas any existing thing is OK.
The Australians are attempting to pass a sub 2KG commercial class which will permit commercial operations without direct oversite.
They will not be required to get either them selves or their craft certified prior to use.
But they will still be required to understand and follow all applicable flight restrictions and they still assume full liability.
We desperately need to have something similar, a definition of and set of rules for "small" UAS that do not require certification of either the UAS or the operator.
The operator is still legally required to understand and safely operate within those rules and is criminally and civilly responsible for doing so.
What bothers me is why something so completely obvious and reasonable is apparently completely incapable of being entertained by our own FAA and US civil aviation authority.
If they end up trying to regulate toy quadcopters with cameras directly they have simply produced a completely untenable situation for everybody, themselves included.
The implied assumption from those advocating certification is that certification improves safety. Considering that there are tens of thousands of civil UAV’s in operation globally and there are few (zero ?) deaths and a small number of injuries. What improvement are we expecting? Certainly civilian UAV’s have an admirable safety record compared to say bicycles or footballs. Footballs travel through the air and are used commercially… perhaps they should be certified.
Certification will have the same effect on drones as it has had on full scale aircraft. Innovation will cease, the user counts will plateau, and costs will increase dramatically.
Is there any platform safer then one tested worldwide by thousands of users and with a very active development?
Didn't we hear this argument before. VMS is the only secure operating system, linux can never be secure because it is open and therefore not tested :-) Seriously - because it has more people looking at it, more testing going on, it is therefore less tested.
Wow, we talked about this very issue today day one of "UAS Applications, Operations and Support: Key Topics of Industry," a two day course offered by Embry-Riddle, in Renton, WA (outside Seattle.) I can understand the comment in the NRC report.
We had an FAA representative in the class. We all talked about design approval for UAV and UAS. There is a design approval process for airplanes, with a host of regulations covering performance, materials, propulsion integration and systems. An airplane's intended design shows compliance substantiation with the regulations.The approved design is manufactured per an approved process, using approved materials. It's then operated per approved procedures, and maintained per approved instructions.
Well, from the start, what is the regulatory basis for the design of a mini-UAV in a UAS? I didn't see FAR Part 23, 25, 27 or 29 applying necessarily to a quadcopter. We discussed the application of either FAR 21.25 restricted category aircraft for the type certificate, or FAR 21.27 surplus aircraft of the Armed Forces, for the type certificate. That could address the design approval questions, but a regulator expects the manufactured UAV to always conform to that specific design, and to be operated only when it conforms to that design.
Is there one "design drawing set" for a system designed by the open source community? Is there an FHA (functional hazard assessment) and safety assessment for the UAV and its interaction with the ground control station? Is there configuration control on the design, is there configuration control on the manufacturing of the "approved" design? Could those concepts (and the regulatory approval process) mesh with open source?
An approved design built with approved materials per approved processes is not unilaterally changed by the type cert holder. Any change needs to be assessed, and many changes need to be approved by the regulator. Is that expectation compatible with open source UAV and UAS?