Business |

Colorado tech companies take advantage of drones to expand use of their products

Predicting and monitoring weather is a tricky and inexact science.

People are restricted by safety concerns, and a lot of technology is stationary, thus limiting what data it can collect.

An unmanned aerial vehicle, on the other hand, provides a safe and efficient way to get high-tech measurement systems near what can be unpredictable and dangerous storms.

“Drones provide an entirely new class of measurements,” said Jack Elston, an officer with UAS Colorado, a nonprofit business league that promotes the expansion and improvement of Colorado’s aerospace industry.

Drones are changing the way we see the world and the way many technology companies are doing business. They have revolutionized everything from large-scale military defense systems and movie entertainment to small-scale photography businesses.

Recently, their presence in Colorado’s airspace has expanded as Colorado tech companies take advantage of drones to increase their accessibility to remote and potentially dangerous environments.

Like the weather drones.

UAS Colorado reports that its corporate membership has increased from five to about 20 over the past three years.

“For a lot of businesses (drones) are another tool in their toolkit,” Elston said. “It gives their companies an edge over companies that use traditional methods.”

Elston, who also works with drones as the vice president of Black Swift  Technologies — a drone manufacturer that contracts with government agencies such as like NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to carry out scientific campaigns and respond to natural disasters — said unmanned aerial systems often decrease companies’ costs and increase productivity by constructing accurate 3-D maps in a short period of time.

Recently, Boulder-based companies Astralite and Freewave have adopted drones as part of their tech initiatives, equipping their with drone compatible components and giving their products access to areas previously unavailable.

FreeWave, an industrial wireless company, manufactures radio transmitters that monitor remote environments, detecting such things as thermal fluctuations and fallen power lines. Strapped to a drone, FreeWave’s technology can monitor scarcely populated areas environments in real time and relay information back to such parties as fire departments, insurance and telephone companies, and dispatchers.

With 2018 shaping up to be one of the most serious fire seasons in the past decade, FreeWave chief marketing officer Scott Allen said the enhancement drones provide could play a key role in preventing catastrophes and providing a quick response to on-going natural disasters.

“It’s going to be very important to deploy (UAVs) with the intelligence already implanted,” Allen said. “Our radios detect where there are potential risks and send applications out in the physical environment that might save lives. It provides a more rapid response and more intelligent response.”

Astralite is also taking advantage of drone technology with the recent launch of their Topo-Bathy UAV LiDAR system. A light-imaging detector like the ones used to direct self-driving cars, Astralite’s LiDAR enables users to survey and map the topography of an area above and below the surface of a body of water.

Other LiDAR technology runs at about the size of a 100-pound suitcase and is restricted to either surface or underwater topography mapping. Astralite’s model, on the other hand, is designed to fit and operate using a drone — expanding its access and allowing it to transition between underwater and surface shots.

Gerald Thomspson, Astralite’s vice president of business development, said Astralite’s LiDAR technology, combined with its UAV compatibility, lends itself to a number of applications including infrastructure inspection, civil engineering, military logistics, natural disaster assessment and recovery, industrial risk assessment, and water resource management.

“Everyone to this point has been using LiDAR as an above water type of application — scanning building infrastructure, cell phone towers, windmill farms. There’s a big portion of data that’s missing,” Thompson said. “What (UAVs) enable is access to places that you can’t usually get information.”

But as an increasing number of drones take to the skies, the question looming over Colorado is how to regulate them.

In recent years, Colorado has begun taking an increased interest in drone regulation at both the state and local level, with state involvement focusing primarily on private drone use as originally outlined by Part 101 of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Small UAS Rules and Regulations. 

Greenwood Village in Arapahoe County became the most recent Colorado community to propose regulations in April of this year. During its 2018 session, the Colorado state legislature passed a law that makes flying a drone in a way that interferes with firefighting duties a misdemeanor.

As Colorado wildfires burn across the state, officials worry that drones seeking aerial photos might interfere with authorities’ efforts to put out the flames.

Never fly drones in or around wildfires. There are reports of drone use near the #LakeChristineFire. Drones impede critical air efforts by the firefighters working to save lives and property in the area. Follow @CarbondaleFire for updates and images like this one from the scene. pic.twitter.com/BmaB3ZWknJ

— Colorado Parks and Wildlife (@COParksWildlife) July 4, 2018

At the end of June, Sens. Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, and Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, took drone regulation to the federal level, introducing the Securing Airspace for Emergency Responders Act — a bill that proposes fining, and possibly jailing, people convicted of flying unauthorized drones. As of June 26 the bill has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee for review.

Commercial operations, on the other hand, have largely remained under the jurisdiction of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Companies such as  Blackswift Technologies, FreeWave and Astralite, whose products are built to operate and survey numerous locations, hope to keep it that way — preferring to follow the centralized regulations developed with input from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Drone Advisory Committee and outlined in Part 107 of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Small UAS Rules and Regulations.

“State regulations only add another layer of bureaucracy,” Elston said.

However, thanks to the recently announced Integration Pilot Program, local governments may get a bigger say in drone regulations beyond takeoff and landing protocols. According to the FAA, the pilot program is meant to facilitate communication between the federal administration and local governments so that national and local interests can be addressed simultaneously.

 

FAA Rules for flying model aicrafts:

If you’re a private drone operator of a drone less than 55 pounds you are subject to the FAA’s Part 101 regulations. The key rules for model aircraft operators are:

• Never fly near other aircraft
• Don’t fly over people
• Keep the drone within the pilot’s visual line of sight
• Register the drone if it weighs between 0.55 and 55 pounds
• Follow the guidelines of a community-based organization such as the Academy of Model Aeronautics
• Notify airports and air traffic control towers if you want to fly within 5 miles of the airport

If you are interested in operating drones for business purposes, you must be certified as a remote pilot and are subject to the FAA’s Part 107 regulations. If you already hold a pilot certificate and have successfully completed a flight review within the past 24 months you can complete a part 107 online training course at www.faasafety.gov. The key rules are:

• Unmanned aircraft must weigh less than 55 pounds, including payload, at takeoff
• Fly in Class G airspace
• Keep the unmanned aircraft within visual line-of-sight
• Fly at or below 400 feet
• Fly during daylight or civil twilight
• Fly at or under 100 mph
• Yield right of way to manned aircraft
• Do not fly directly over people
• Do not fly from a moving vehicle, unless in a sparsely populated area