TECHNOLOGY Drones
“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 AirTaxis and so on.” 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, certainly as any other European country. However, in order to have a cohesive, fully-functioning, 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.
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 consumer’s homes.
“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, and making sure that you’ve got really robust strategic and tactical automated pathfinding and emergency event – so making sure all those subsystems are all in place. 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 the ground, but it will
also be drones talking to other drones, talking to other robots, and their autonomous cars and AirTaxis – 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 AirTaxis 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.” IDAIRELAND.COM
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