The article the commercial use of Drones by Dart Drones written June 15, 2015 discusses about the future of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) in the commercial sector and the restriction by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on the use of UAS for commercial purposes.
One the future uses that caught my attention was News/Journalism where the article discussed the benefit of using a UAS compared to an helicopter, some of the benefits were the cost of operation of the UAS compared to the helicopter and the fact that the UAS can fit into much tighter spaces. Another interesting future use that caught my attention was the use of the UAS for construction and landscaping which shows how UAS could offer simple and easy landscaping and can assist in getting information needed for creating blue prints and more.
As for restriction, presently the use of UAS for commercial purposes is restricted by the FAA and only about 500 individuals and corporations have received section 333 exemption which allows the full operation of a UAS but in order for businesses to fully utilize them it is important that the FAA lift the restriction, unfortunately with a lot of near misses between the UAS and MAS occurring frequently(Ribeiro, 2016) it is difficult for the FAA to lift the restriction.
Luckily there is a sense and avoidance project presently going on involving the National Aeronautics Space Agency (NASA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), General Atomic Aeronautical System (GA-ASI) and Honeywell international Inc that have successfully demonstrated a proof of the concept Sense And Avoid (SAA) System marking milestones to inform the development of standards and regulations to safely integrate UAS in the National Airspace System (NAS) (Conner, 2015). Once this project is complete it is only a matter of time before the FAA gives full authority to UAS operators whose system have the required sense and avoidance system to operate in the NAS.
Reference:
Conner, M. (2015, August 31). NASA, FAA, Industry Conduct Initial Sense-and-Avoid Test. Retrieved April 30, 2016 http://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/Features/acas_xu_paves_the_way.html (Links to an external site.)
Dart Drone (2015, June 15). The commercial use of Drone. Retrieved May 20, 2016
http://dartdrones.com/commercial-use-of-drones/
Ribiero, J (2016, March 20). Near miss between drone and Lufthansa plane fuels demand for regulation. Retrieved May 21, 2016 from
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3046082/near-miss-between-drone-and-lufthansa-plane-fuels-demand-for-regulation.html
