Month: December 2019

SAM IS ....
Have you gifted or received a drone at Christmas?

 If so, read on!

 

1) The Age of the Recipient

You must take into account the age of the person receiving the drone for multiple reasons including safety, practicality and suitability. Drones come in a variety of sizes, some tiny, hand-size devices designed to be flown indoors (please make sure pets are safely out of the way) and more robust ones that can cope with a bit of wind. It always worth reading the manufacturer’s guidelines with regards to the conditions it can be flown in.

 

2) UK Legislation

Drone Code: These are simple rules to help you know how to fly legally.

  • Always keep your drone within sight.
  • Never fly more than 400ft (120m) above the surface and stay well away from airports, aircraft and airfields.
  • Never fly closer than 50m to people. Even when your drone is more than 50m away from people it is safer to avoid directly overflying them.
  • Never fly closer than 50m to buildings, cars, trains or boats.
  • Never fly closer than 150m to a crowd of 1,000 people or more. Never fly directly over a crowd.
  • Never fly in an airport’s flight restriction zone.
  • It is illegal to fly a drone or model aircraft between 250g-20kg that does not show a valid operator ID.
  • For more information, download a copy of this pdf to include with your present: DroneSafe Rules.

 

3) Who will be Responsible for Registering it?

Registration: In the UK, as of 30 November 2019, drones weighing more than 250g must be registered with the Civil Aviation Authority (the CAA) before being flown outside.

The Recipient will need Operator ID and the Flyer will need to take a test to show that they understand the basics of the Air Navigation Order (ANO). The Operator must be 18 or older and if the Flyer is 13 or under a parent or guardian must be present at registration.

You need to be sure that someone will assume responsibility for registering the drone as it is a legal requirement. For more information, go to the CAA’s website.

 

4) Appropriate Places to Fly

Before you buy a drone as a gift, try to figure out where the recipient may fly it. As far as the law goes, no one owns the air but that doesn’t mean you can fly it in your back garden if you live close to others. You must check the rules above.

Don’t assume that because you can’t see the landowner, that it’s ok to fly. For example, the National Trust and English Heritage don’t permit flying from their land, but talk to a friendly landowner and come to an arrangement. They may not want you flying above their prize-winning flock of sheep, but the field beyond is free.

There are a number of apps that will help you decide if you are flying in a safe place, some of which come as standard when you buy insurance. We strongly recommend this. There will come a time when the drone flies away, hits a tree, lands in water or hits something causing damage, and then you will find you need insurance but it will be too late. Coverdrone, Flock and Moonrock all have ‘pay as you fly’ and ‘annual cover’ options.

 

5) ARPAS-UK Membership

Of course we’re going to mention this!

ARPAS-UK is the UK’s only not-for-profit Association that works on behalf of the drone industry. We work with Government departments, the CAA and other key stakeholders to help keep the airspace as accessible as possible, promote the use of drones within the UK economy, and encourage safe, responsible flying.

For £25 for Recreational Membership, you can help support us in our work. Join Here

 

#FlySmartFlySafe

SAM IS ....
Drone-Based Reseeding Service Gains BVLOS Approval

DroneSeed UAV

DroneSeed, a startup that uses drone swarms to deliver seed payloads to restore forests and rangelands after wildfires, has announced that the company has been awarded an additional amendment to its FAA Part 333 exemption that will enable it to operate its seed-planting drones Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS).

DroneSeed has previously earned the first and only approval by the FAA to operate heavy-lift drone swarms of up to five aircraft each carrying more than 57 lbs., which has allowed the company to secure contracts for post-fire restoration and forestry projects for The Nature Conservancy, Tribal entities and major timber companies. DroneSeed’s unmanned aircraft use “pucks” containing seeds, fertilizers and other amendments designed to boost seed survival, and this method of post-fire replanting can eliminate delays of 18-36 months waiting for seedlings to grow in a nursery.

The new ability to operate drones beyond a pilot’s view will provide access to areas that need post-fire replanting but lack a nearby road. The drone-based solution will also improve safety – scorched timber that is left onsite can fall over and kill workers performing manual replanting. Natural forest regeneration is also in decline due to climate change, with 40% of post-fire Northwest forests at risk of state-shift to grassy scrublands. DroneSeed can safely and efficiently replant seed vessels that boost survival rates immediately after a fire, deploying them with greater precision and efficacy by targeting areas called ‘microsites’ where regrowth has its best odds.

Grant Canary, Founder and CEO of DroneSeed, commented: “In an age where wildfires are both more severe, yet the new normal, and natural forest regeneration is declining rapidly, we need better tools such as drone swarms to have a shot at keeping the forests we have in addition to planting more trees to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.”

 

by Mike Ball for Unmanned Systems News

16th December 2019

 

SAM IS ....
Parrot launches professional drone loan program

Parrot launches professional drone loan program to strengthen solutions for enterprise partners.

Parrot, the leading European drone group, is launching an enterprise loan program that will give professionals a chance to put its ANAFI drone platform to work through its Enterprise Loan Program (ELP).

The company developed the program to allow enterprises to test its professional ANAFI platform within a working environment for six weeks. Program partners will receive a complete set of hardware (drone, controller, batteries) and software (piloting app, SDK documentation, third-party apps, and services)– providing them the opportunity to discover the full capabilities of the ANAFI platform and how it can be integrated into their businesses.

Parrot is looking to receive feedback from its program partners on how ANAFI professional drones perform in real use-case scenarios.

Parrot Anafi used for public safety.

“We are incredibly excited to work more closely with our program partners as we continue to enhance our business solutions using the ANAFI platform,” said Chris Roberts, chief sales and marketing officer. “Drones for enterprise are advancing the possibilities for businesses across the globe and we are proud to be a part of that movement. We are confident this program will drive higher efficiency and safety for our partners while simultaneously helping Parrot to deliver a greater user experience to its customers. Since its inception, Parrot has served as an integral driver within the professional drone sector. As the industries of its business partners continue to evolve, Parrot aims to create solutions with its professional drones that extend beyond user’s needs of today to solve for the business challenges of tomorrow.”

“We are incredibly excited to work more closely with our program partners as we continue to enhance our business solutions using the ANAFI platform“

Parrot’s professional ANAFI drones are designed to be compact and easy-to-use for a variety of industries including construction, inspection, security, and emergency services.

Parrot offers a variety of professional solutions through its ANAFI platform including ANAFI Thermal and ANAFI Work.

To further support its mission to create innovative business solutions, Parrot is creating a series of “Tech Days” globally which will provide the company insight into how professionals are incorporating ANAFI into their everyday workflow. Stay tuned for further details on a local “Tech Days” program near you!

The ELP is now open to receive business partner applications. Businesses can apply to the program by completing Parrot’s ELP form.

 

 

Parrot

20th October 2019

SAM IS ....
SOARIZON launches across Europe
We are very proud to announce the launch of SOARIZON across Europe.

ARPAS-UK Member, SOARIZON is designed to help drone operators scale by streamlining drone operations. We’ve combined all aspects of planning and flying drone missions, historically done using separate apps and manual processes, into one intuitive platform.

 

Since we started out in 2018 we’ve been working hard to build a product that works for drone operators of any size. SOARIZON’s purpose is to combine and streamline all of the various aspects of planning drone missions making it easier to scale your UAS operations.

From initial mission planning through to operational management of drone teams, we’ve included everything you need to effectively manage a growing team.

Since we launched our free to use service in the late spring of 2019 hundreds of drone pilots have been using it to plan their missions, with many providing valuable data and feedback to help us build new features and continually improve.

We’ve also got a strong roadmap for future development with key industry partners, meaning SOARIZON really is the only drone management platform you’ll ever need. Soon you’ll be able to purchase discounted drone insurance through the platform, as well as process outputs and flight logs from your drone.

Open innovation ethos

We truly believe in the power of open innovation to drive collaborative thinking and creative problem-solving.

That’s why we work with with a wide range of exciting organisations to develop solutions to real life problems using drone technology. This year the team has worked on projects including:

With many more exciting projects like this planned in 2020, SOARIZON is demonstrating how technology and wider autonomous vehicle connectivity will have a wider impact on society.

2020 and beyond

Michael Oliver, Head of SOARIZON, said “We are delighted to launch SOARIZON Go+ across the EU this week. The team has been working hard to deliver a leading service for the rapidly growing drone economy and will continue to improve and integrate even more features to help drone operators scale successfully.

We plan to continue to roll out the service in 2020. Our free service is currently available globally, with SOARIZON Go+ launching in the US next year. We are excited about helping drone operators to unleash their full drone potential.”

 

IT’S FREE TO REGISTER FOR YOUR VERY OWN SOARIZON® ACCOUNT.

Become part of the community shaping the future of operational drone management, today.

GET STARTED

 

THE SOARIZON TEAM / DECEMBER 9, 2019

From the Soarizon Website

 

SAM IS ....
UNICEF Innovation Fund welcomes six drone startups to help solve global challenges

The UNICEF Innovation Fund is pleased to announce that six new drone startups, developing open-source, emerging technology digital public goods to address global challenges and create fairer opportunities for children and young people, will receive seed funding from UNICEF’s Innovation Fund. To learn more about the companies and how this ties into UNICEF’s Drone strategy, read on.

Located in emerging economies across the globe, these investments are part of UNICEF’s larger drones programme exploring the use of the technology for a range of applications, including humanitarian supply chain systems and delivery, improved connectivity in hard-to-reach communities, and aerial imaging for better preparedness and response in emergencies.

Bioverse Labs(Brazil), Cloudline Africa (South Africa), Dronfies Labs (Uruguay), Prokura Innovations (Nepal), qAira (Peru), and Rentadrone (Chile) are the startups that will be supported by the UNICEF Innovation team over the next twelve months.

The companies will not only benefit from the seed investment provided by UNICEF’s Innovation Fund, but will also gain access to four humanitarian drone testing corridors in Africa and Central Asia, and UNICEF’s Ventures team and networks, providing support from technical assistance to networking with industry leaders, as well as creating a community around the open-source solutions developed.

Our Approach 

Since 2016, UNICEF has been using drones to better serve the world’s children by strengthening humanitarian supply chain, emergency response and disaster risk reduction initiatives. Drones have demonstrated a capacity to deliver life-saving materials, to collect aerial imagery that helps map risks and build more resilient communities, and to provide households with better information that contributes to improved livelihoods, among other promising use cases. UNICEF supports countries who are interested in leveraging drone-based technologies to improve service delivery for children by creating a favorable ecosystem for testing and accelerating the adoption of drone technology for humanitarian deployments.

Drone testing corridors located in Kasungu, Malawi; Akmola and Almaty, Kazakhstan; and Freetown, Sierra Leone. UNICEF brings together various actors, from public and private sectors and academia, to use drones for good in a controlled and safe environment and to inform regulation, policy, capacity and skills development in these countries. For example, in Kazakhstan, drones have been used in the corridors to train emergency responders to save lives in search and rescue missions. In Malawi, the corridor has been used by companies to gain flying expertise and obtain approvals from aviation authorities to deploy their drones at national scale; drones then create efficiencies in the delivery of medical supplies, reducing transportation time and ensuring children who require treatment can receive it early. In Vanuatu, UNICEF supported the government to set up the first commercial drone delivery network for vaccines, reducing a journey that took several hours into just 25 minutes, to safely deliver vaccines from distribution centers to rural vaccination posts.

Skill development and certifications to increase local capacity and ensure self-sustaining ecosystems to deploy drone technologies. In Malawi, UNICEF will be launching the first drone and data academy in the world to provide African students with the necessary skill sets to build and fly drones, collect and analyze aerial imagery, and start a business venture. The team is also exploring how to leverage the public blockchain ethereum to issue certificates for drone operators’ licenses, as well as for organizations who partner with UNICEF to test their drones in for good missions in our corridors.

Seed investments to entrepreneurs that accelerate the development of digital public goods in the drone technology sector. These digital public goods can be either the design and blueprints to build low-cost and long-endurance drones for the delivery of medical supplies under an open-source license, or open-source algorithms to model precipitation and floods that help to better identify households at risk. Each investment within this cohort has the potential to improve efficiencies within UNICEF’s programmes, creating solutions that contribute to improve the living conditions of the most disadvantaged children.

The companies

  • Bioverse Labs (Brazil) uses drone imagery and machine learning to identify and map non-timber species of trees that are economically viable for supporting traditional modes of income generation for indigenous populations, thereby contributing to the sustainability of the Amazonian ecosystem.
  • Cloudline Africa (South Africa) operates small-scale autonomous airships that have longer endurance and range than current commercial drones; their solution will help deliver medical supplies to hard-to-reach communities and reduce operational costs in the last-mile.
  • Dronfies Labs (Uruguay) provides support to drone operations during emergency situations. They are developing an intelligent flight and traffic management system for drones in low connectivity settings that supports real-time data sharing for airspace management and multiple drone operations coordination.
  • Prokura Innovations (Nepal) is developing a locally produced and low-cost drone system to tackle last-mile delivery of medicines, connecting underserved health posts to a surrounding equipped health facility.
  • qAira (Peru) is developing a drone to monitor air quality, as well as  developing algorithms to translate data acquired by sensors mounted in drones to visualize air quality parameters for environmental protection.
  • Rentadrone (Chile) is developing solutions using machine learning, thermal and multispectral imagery to both automatically detect diseases on crops and detect, classify and organize the errors and damaged modules in Solar Power Plants, which will improve energy efficiency and the performance of sustainable energy sources.
© Cloudline Africa The team at Cloudline Africa test their autonomous airship
© Cloudline Africa

UNICEF’s Innovation Fund invests (up to $100k) in early stage, open-source, emerging technology digital public goods with the potential to impact children on a global scale. It also provides product and technology assistance, support with business growth, access to a network of experts and partners to allow for scale and growth. The investments can go either to UNICEF Country Offices or to private sector companies in UNICEF programme countries.

 

Link to the UNICEF Drone website

 

Article by SUASnews

10th December 2019

SAM IS ....
DJI’s AeroScope Passes Evaluation by UK’s National Infrastructure Protection Agency

The UK has had its fair share of drone-related disruption, most notably with the grounding of flights across several days at London’s Gatwick airport – around this time last year.

Ever since, the UK government has been grappling with the issue of drone misuse. New legislation has been passed enforcing drone registration for hobbyists, while airports around the country have upgraded their security systems.

Now, DJI’s AeroScope system has been officially included in UK’s Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) Catalogue of Security Equipment. CPNI works to identify risks to and reduce the vulnerability of infrastructure, including airports.

AeroScope is a situational awareness tool that can be easily deployed at sensitive locations to detect and track nearby DJI drones and the location of their pilots.

The system was assessed successfully under the CPNI Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems (CUAS) Detect, Track and Identify (DTI) Testing and Evaluation Standard. As a result, it will be included in the CPNI’s recommended security equipment catalogue.

AeroScope / DJI

AeroScope as a go-to remote-ID solution

AeroScope is targeted at hobbyists and works on the presumption that people will obey the rules – both with regards to registration and no-fly zones. As a result, it’s not really intended to be deployed against drone pilots with malicious intent.

Having said that, there’s no reason why the system can’t be used in conjunction with other counter-measures to protect sensitive locations. Depending on the infrastructure, most drone-related disruption is caused by clueless hobbyists and those bending the rules on the presumption that they won’t get caught. AeroScope can certainly help with that.

“Whether implementing safety features into DJI drones or developing protocols such as our ‘Elevating Safety: Protecting The Skies In The Drone Era’, DJI recognises the importance of working with all stakeholders to ensure a safer flying environment for everyone,” said Christian Struwe, Director of Public Policy, DJI EMEA.

“It’s fantastic news that our DJI AeroScope system has been recognised by the UK’s Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, as a remote-ID solution to enable authorities to identify who is flying near sensitive locations or in ways that raise serious concerns.”

Balance between drone ID and pilot privacy

AeroScope represents DJI’s best efforts to find a middle ground between authorities’ need to identify drones and pilots’ right to fly without pervasive surveillance.

It works with all current models of DJI drones and transmits via an existing communications protocol, so there’s no requirement for new on-board equipment or modifications.

According to DJI, “During the CNPI’s assessment they found AeroScope was very simple to set up, learn and use with an intuitive interface. It responded to multiple UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System) operating concurrently and the detection, tracking and identification performance was consistent.”

 

by Malek Murrison

For Drone Life

10th December 2019

SAM IS ....
Coptrz Counter Drone System Meets Highest CPNI Standards
Coptrz Counter Drone System – M.A.D.S has received approval by the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) with its specifications endorsed to meet Counter-UAS recommendations for Tier 1, 2 and 3.

 

After extensive testing by the CPNI, the Detect, Track and Identify Standards (DTI) have been produced to provide a baseline of requirements for counter-drone systems relating to various levels of drone protection for national critical infrastructure.

Created by ARPAS-UK Members COPTRZ – UK Commercial Drone Experts, M.A.D.S (Martek Anti-Drone System) provides detection, tracking and identification using two complementary detection systems, both of which have been confirmed as meeting the CPNI standards for DTI. The technology options are modular, allowing compliance right up to the highest tier of CPNI compliance. Utilising the detection of the radio frequency communications between the drone and the pilot, with the optional modular additions of cameras and radar, M.A.D.S. can identify the location of both the pilot and the drone. These detection events are logged in high detail with automated alerts and scheduled activity reports automatically generated with no requirement for active operator involvement.

Steve Coulson, Coptrz Managing Director said:

“We developed the M.A.D.S system with the highest level of protection in mind. We’re delighted that this announcement now confirms our integral technology in M.A.D.S is compliant to detect the UK’s most critical infrastructure. We work with a large range of UK businesses to use drones for the good, making operations safer, faster and cheaper and at the same time we help protect our customers and their assets from the potential of malicious use.”

For more information on protecting your assets download our guide HERE. 

 

From SUAS News

10th December 2019

SAM IS ....
CAP 1868: A Unified Approach to the Introduction of UAS Traffic Management

The intention of this Innovation Hub paper is to recommend actions to create a policy framework that will facilitate the introduction of a unified approach to the safe integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).

The paper also aims to give an appreciation of the scale and breadth of impact that the integration of UAS into UK airspace could have across the aviation ecosystem. This aims to justify why the development and implementation of policies, regulations, technology and systems will require extensive collaboration and leadership on a national and international scale.

The recommendations are summarised on page 29 and are aimed primarily at the CAA and HM Government to facilitate positive action in the near term. Publishing these recommendations is intended to aid transparency on the process and progress of the CAA in this area.

It is expected that the paper will inform the government’s Aviation Strategy 2050 via the joint UTM Policy Group, which may also take forward some of the actions. Necessary enabling work, once it is defined, will be included in an updated Airspace Modernisation Strategy to help deliver UAS traffic management (UTM) in coordination with the other initiatives to modernise the UK’s airspace.

 

CAP1868UTMInnovationHub

SAM IS ....
Hummingbird Tech in Disrupters to Watch Supplement

Disruptors / Ones to Watch

Fast Track researches and compiles two annual sub-tables, published in our Fast Track 100 supplement with The Sunday Times, featuring promising private British companies from a cross-section of industries that do not qualify for the main league table but deserve special recognition. The Disruptors to Watch focuses on companies with the potential to disrupt their market; and the Ones to Watch features companies that are set to grow rapidly.

The 10 finalists for each programme are selected by a judging panel and are featured in the Sunday Times supplement. Their senior directors are also invited to the awards dinner, where they receive a certificate, with one overall winner presented with an award.

DISRUPTORS TO WATCH ONES TO WATCH

 

For more information and the rest of the article.