US aviation rules may ground Amazon’s drone delivery plans

Washington/Dallas: Book and food deliveries by drones, such as those unveiled by Amazon.com Inc. chief executive officer Jeff Bezos, may be grounded under rules US regulators are writing.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to bar operation of unmanned aircraft flying a computerized flight path instead of being controlled by a person, according to an agency document released on 7 November outlining plans for integrating the vehicles into the nation’s airways.

Small drones, like the one demonstrated by Bezos on CBS’s 60 Minutes news programme, are expected to have separate rules requiring they be flown within sight of an operator and only in unpopulated areas, Ben Gielow, general counsel of the Association for Unmanned Vehicles Systems International, an Arlington, Virginia-based trade group, said in an interview.

It’s unclear whether those commercial purposes will be allowed, Gielow said.

“It may take a decade for the FAA and the unmanned aircraft industry to craft workable rules that ensure the safety and reliability of autonomous drones that deliver pizza and books,” John Hansman, an aeronautics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied drones, said in an interview.

“In the early stages of such delivery systems, costs will be so high that drones will only be practical for task such as dispatching emergency medical supplies,” Hansman said.

“You have to have appropriate controls,” he said. “You don’t want to create safety problems. But the technology will advance. These things will get extremely reliable.”

Octocoper deliveries

Autonomous drone operations are not currently allowed in the US, FAA said on Monday in an emailed statement. The agency, which doesn’t yet allow commercial drone use in the US, didn’t comment directly on Amazon.

Bezos said on 60 Minutes that the multirotor devices Amazon calls octocopters may be ready in four or five years. The company is waiting for the FAA to set rules for the devices, he said. While Congress required the FAA to create rules by 2015, FAA administrator Michael Huerta said last month that full integration may take longer.

The company has already reached out to the aviation regulation agency, Mary Osako, a company spokeswoman, said in an email.

The drones envisioned by Amazon would be programmed with GPS coordinates that allow them to fly directly to a customer’s door, according to Bezos and a company video posted on Google Inc.’s YouTube.

5-pound packages

At least for the foreseeable future, such devices won’t be permitted to fly under FAA rules, according to the agency’s plan for how to regulate unmanned vehicles. A drone operator must have full control or be able to assume control at all times, according to the agency.

The model featured on ‘60 Minutes’ is autonomous but we have developed several prototypes in our lab, Osako said.

When asked if that meant the company planned to have a pilot for each drone, Osako said the company will comply with FAA regulations.

Amazon wants the vehicles to be capable of delivering packages weighing as much as 5 pounds (2.3kg) within a 10-mile (16-km) radius, Bezos said.

While Atlanta-based United Parcel Service Inc., the world’s largest shipping company, has met with drone vendors, it doesn’t anticipate using unmanned aircraft anytime soon, chief sales and marketing officer Alan Gershenhorn said in an interview on Monday.

‘Far off’

Technologies enabling commercial use of small drones are pretty far off, he said. The demand for same-day use is a niche offering today that has logistical bandwidth constraints associated with it in terms of cost and other factors.

Carla Boyd, a spokeswoman for Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx Corp., operator of the biggest cargo airline, declined to speculate about this particular technology.

FedEx estimates revenue from intra-city delivery of small packages in the US may be as much as $12 billion.

The unmanned aircraft industry believes that technology allowing pizzas or books to be delivered automatically are driving a potential boom in the industry, Gielow said.

“The technology is moving forward rapidly,” he said. “But the regulations and the safety criteria aren’t keeping pace. We are potentially risking our leadership in this technology if we can’t expedite the creation of safety regulations.”

“This is early,” Bezos said in the interview on Monday. “This is still years away.” Bloomberg

 

MITHILESH CHAUBEY

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