Flights of Fancy

Drone technology is opening up opportunities in almost every industry, from arts and technology to philanthropy, and businesses across the world are using it in some form. JENNIFER McSHANE talks to Professor Tim McCarthy, who is involved in Drone Research and Development (R&D) for U-Flyte, a Science Foundation Ireland funded project based at the National Centre for Geocomputation at Maynooth University. He explains the challenges currently facing the drone industry and the opportunities it will afford global companies.

FOR THOSE WHO AREN’T OVERLY FAMILIAR WITH THE USE AND FUNCTION OF DRONE TECHNOLOGY, AT ITS MOST BASIC LEVEL, IT HAS GIVEN BUSINESSES AN AERIAL PERSPECTIVE THEY WOULDN’T ORDINARILY HAVE GOTTEN IN THE PAST. DRONE USE GOES AS FAR BACK AS THE 190OS. HOWEVER, THE COMMERCIAL APPLICATION OF DRONES HAS REALLY ONLY TAKEN OFF IN THE LAST FIVE OR SIX YEARS WHEN IT BECAME COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE AT A RELATIVELY LOW COST FOR USAGE. THEIR USE HAS NATURALLY EXPANDED SINCE INCEPTION AND TODAY, GLOBAL COMPANIES USE THEM FOR A VARIETY OF FUNCTIONS.

Starting in 2018 and coming to an end in early 2022, U-Flyte is a strategic research partnership, coordinated by Maynooth University and funded by Science Foundation Ireland, together with key industry collaborators including Airbus, Irelandia Aviation and Intel. Essentially, the R&D workplan is based around a series of interconnected work-packages that primarily deals with investigating, building and testing Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), TrafficManagement (UTM), underpinned by a 3D drone airspace model (U-Space).

“Our research is in two distinct parts: one that deals with Aerospace and Air Traffic Management systems for drones. Another part then dealing with the data platform, given that drones are censored up with optical radar navigation. So, we’re involved with quite a few activities, whether it’s deliveries with Bobby Healy’s Manna, right through to working with Irish Search and Rescue (SAR) teams and everything in between,” explains Professor Tim McCarthy.

With drones, he says, in a nutshell, you can do a few different things which serve as great opportunities for businesses, and the attraction for use comes in varying forms. For many companies, it’s looking at the efficiency of drones; it’s about time-saving, cost-saving, to an environmentally-friendly option – all of which the technology offers. “You’ll always start with data acquisition, so you’ve got your cameras on board, and these can map, monitor and detect. They also have LiDAR systems (similar to radar), and they basically capture three-to-five dimensional photos – a 3D view of the ground.”

“Then you move to filming for movies, documentaries, or videography to logistics, things like delivery services, right up to larger scale functions such as air taxis from Volocopter and so on.” The German-based European company is as ahead of the curve as anyone right now, Tim says, in terms of looking a couple of years down the line where instead of jumping into a standard cab, you’ll instead use one of their environmentally-friendly electronic air taxis.

“In terms of what’s here with us now, for most companies, data-gathering and mapping, certainly for specialised services such as SAR, is at the fore, whereas things like logistics and package delivery, air taxis and all of that – that’s the big prize and it’s still a couple of years out.”

Of course, with any evolving technology and industry, there are challenges, particularly when it comes to testing and developing Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and the rules and regulations which come with that. “The big issue, with some of the delivery services, and also the air taxi services, is they bring you in close contact with humans; by definition, therein lies a problem. Anytime you mix roles with humans, it can cause a few issues, not just regulatory and safety-related, but also things like privacy can and do come up.” A key thing to combat potential issues regarding security, is training and awareness, both in terms of operating the drones and the information put out to the general public.

“Essentially, you’ve got to reinvent the human as a machine. In Volocopter, for example, what they’ll probably be doing is a scenario where there will be actual pilots sitting inside these two-and three-seater aircrafts, starting off the service because of the safety and the regulatory certifications needed, along with the supporting technology – basically to ensure the plane doesn’t fall out of the sky or to ensure they don’t crash into one another in the air! You need perspective sensors on board – it’s the same as the analogue for autonomous cars and the problems these are causing, be it mixing up people that are in front of them or whirring past a road sign.”

“And even though the sensors have got a lot more compact and affordable, it still is a big ask to have a central system that replicates what a human can do,” Tim continues. “So at the moment, in terms of the technologies, you’re more looking at collision avoidance, so Detect and Avoid

“In terms of what’s here with us now, for most companies, data-gathering and mapping, certainly for specialised services such as SAR, is at the fore, whereas things like logistics and package delivery, air taxis and all of that that’s the big prize and it’s still a couple of years out.”

“I think here, it goes back to the bigger picture and not just looking at robotics, but a complete ecosystem, not just in terms of mobility, data gathering or logistics, but it’s way across the full spectrum. I think we’ve got to look at it like the robots are here to stay.”

(DAA) and general lower airspace monitoring before we can go a bit bigger with package deliveries and then air taxis and so on.”

However, companies are working on this, However, companies are working on this, from the European-based SESAR to NASA UTM in the United States and in Ireland he agrees we’re as much at the frontier of drone technology and what we’re doing with drones’ technology and applications, drones’ technology and applications, certainly as any other European country. However, in order to have a cohesive, fullyfunctioning, drone-based outlet, companies do have a lot of work ahead of them before drone technology is ready to be regularly used city-to-city.

“What you tend to see currently is a lot of companies going out, trying to kind of concentrate on getting their platforms up in the air and getting them certified. But that really is only half the battle. The other half is to make sure that the supporting technologies in terms of lower airspace monitoring [are in place], and making sure that you’ve got really robust strategic and tactical automated pathfinding, particularly in case of an emergency event – so it’s making sure all those subsystems are all functional. And really, everything has got to be right and across the line together. And in the future, it won’t be just drones talking to systems on

Volocopter plans to make air taxi services a reality in Singapore within the next three years. Using custom-developed aerospace grade drones, Manna deliver directly from restaurants and centralised kitchens to consumers’ homes.

the ground, but it will also be drones talking to other drones, talking to other robots, and their autonomous cars and air taxis – and everything getting interlinked. So there might be five or six major things that need to be more developed with more testing before drone technology is going to become a reality over our towns and cities.”

“I think here, it goes back to the bigger picture and not just looking at robotics, but a complete ecosystem, not just in terms of mobility, data gathering or logistics, but it’s way across the full spectrum. I think we’ve got to look at it like the robots are here to stay. At the moment, they’re coming in at a thinner edge of the wage in terms of things like data gathering and some of those tasks but they are definitely here to stay and I think in our lifetime we will be looking at a vista of air taxis and delivery drones all connected up.”

And crucially, critical to the long-term success of drone technology is human involvement.” One of the most important elements of this is we have to bring the humans along with us. We’ve got to actually pull that tab along the line, making sure that this technology is something that we, as humans, would be happy with, and not just the technologists making the calls on what they think should be laws or in regulation, we need to bring in the wider set of inputs from ordinary citizens from different backgrounds, just to make sure we get it right.”