Responding to the Next Five Years
Based on the predictions of UAS in the next five years on campus we discovered that there are some holes in our policy that need to be addressed.
1) Swarms. Swarming drones can be done completely within the current law, but this poses a much more dangerous operation because if any one drone fails it has the potential for disaster. The solution to this problem will be requiring groups that want to warm their drones to operate in preapproved locations, away from people and buildings so as to minimize the risk involved. I may also prove to be a good idea to have required training and safety procedures be put in place so that if one drone fails the other pilots can respond correctly and safely.
2) Delivery. Since waivers for beyond line of sight flight seem to be on the horizon the UC must respond to the potential uses of this permit. Delivery services may want to fly food small packages to campus requiring them to cross streets and land on campus before returning. This poses several risks as it needs to cross areas that may have people and it may need to land to deliver the payload. Solving this issue means that there need to be planned flight paths to and from campus for the drones and they need to be able to cross roads safely, likely having a camera with the operator deciding when to cross. A delivery point will create a safe location for the exchange to happen, away from uninvolved people and with the supervision of UC staff.
3) Hobbyists. Hobbyists may seem to be covered under current policy, but the fact that the amount of drone users continues to grow means that the UC needs a new system to properly deal with these increased numbers. One way to go about this would be to have several tiers of pilots registered with the University and several different flight areas. What this means is that if a pilot has flown without incident many times, their request could be expedited to ease the flow of requests. Different flight locations could separate users so that fixed wings have ample space or so micro drones don’t interfere with larger ones
