Canadian UAV Regulations: More Learning, Less Fear.

New recreational unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) rules were announced before the weekend by Canadian Transportation Minister Marc Garneau. Recreational users face hefty fines if they do not abide by certain rules, namely not flying within nine kilometers of an active airstrip. I’ve been asked by quite a few people about the new restrictions since they were released and my response has been that they have always been ‘the rules’ – however previously they had existed as ‘guidelines’ and no penalties could be handed down for breaking them. These ‘guidelines’ have always been front and center in every operation we carry out – also I’m not aware of any incidents where someone needed to be fined for negligent drone use but laws did not exist to penalize them.

I also take issue with the Transportation Minister’s statement from CBC.ca “I have read almost on a daily basis reports from pilots coming into airports, on the flight path, and reporting seeing a drone off the wing.” This is absolutely false. If there were this many UAV’s being spotted at Canadian airports, why have we not seen more investigations regarding them? Further, there have been zero reported cases of a UAV hitting an airplane – both in Canada and the United States. This statement breeds unnecessary fear which leads to hastily prepared, ill-thought regulations. Based upon this statement alone, I’m hesitant to discover further rules being handed down in June.

We need less fear from our politicians and more education. Current efforts to bring a minimum of learning to future UAV pilots before their first operation are crucial to tackling the problem. What kind of minimum education do you think pilots should have before their first flight?

Canadian Drones Save Lives

While unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) may not be a big part of your life right now, one day they just might save it.

In May 2013, the Saskatchewan RCMP reported the first life saved by a UAV in Canada. A man driving in near-freezing temperatures wearing only a t-shirt had flipped his car off the road in a remote, wooded area.  The man managed to call 911 but did not know where he was so only the last recorded location on his cell phone’s GPS was used. The police had originally deployed a regular, manned helicopter equipped with night vision to try and find him, but they weren't able to during an initial sweep of the area.

The RCMP eventually deployed their Draganflyer X4-E5 UAV which was equipped with an infrared camera. The UAV soon picked up three heat signatures 200 meters from the last known GPS location, where fire department members found the driver curled next to a tree.  According to the RCMP’s website that without the UAV, searchers would not have been able to locate the driver until daylight meaning he would have frozen to death before he could have been reached.

UAV’s are still in their genesis when it comes to bringing life-saving supplies to remote areas. Germany’s logistics company DHL will begin daily flights with their quad-rotor "DHL Paketkopter 2.0" to bring a maximum load of 1.2 kilograms of medicine to the sparsely populated German island of ‘Juist,’ located just off the nation’s northern coast. Flying up to 65kmph with the flight expected to take as long as 30 minutes, this is the first time an unmanned aircraft has been authorized to deliver goods in Europe. With medication, other urgently needed goods will also be transported, at times when other modes of transport such as flights or ferries are not operating.

The UAV Goes to School

Three quarters of a decade ago, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) invested millions into creating ‘neuromorphic chips’ – a type of computer chip that is designed to be as close as possible to a human brain in function, size and power consumption– in short, a ‘brain chip.’ With the project titled ‘SyNAPSE’ – Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scale Electronics – the ‘brain chip’ sounds like something you would find inside the research labs of Cyberdyne.

One of these ‘brain chips’ was tested inside a tiny unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which measured six inches square, 1.5 inches high, and weighed only 93 grams, including the battery.

The ‘brain chip’ works by having networks of silicon ‘neurons’ that communicate through jolts of electricity.  In the experiment, the UAV flew between three different rooms, where the ‘brain chip’ absorbed data from the aircraft’s optical, infrared and ultrasound sensors. Incoming sensor data from the room’s walls and furniture was created in the networks of silicon neurons and the UAV began to understand its surroundings. This caused a separate pattern of electrical activity in the neurons that the chip had never experienced before.” The connected neurons had begun to change, mimicking a crude version of learning like in a real brain. The UAV became ‘self-aware’ and started learning on its own, albeit in a very basic way.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to fundamentally change our civilization in ways we could not imagine. As AI takes to the skies, the public debate on the ethics of artificial intelligence will only increase.

Drones for Good in the Persian Gulf

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently held an international competition titled “The Drones for Good Award’ with the winner being awarded $1 million US dollars. Out of over 800 total contest entries which were whittled down to 39 semi-finalists, the winning design was the “Gimball” unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) created by the Swiss firm “Flyability.”

Made with rescue and industrial inspection needs in mind, this aircraft is equipped with a rotating carbon-fiber cage that absorbs impacts to keep it from crashing into obstacles as well as allows it to roll along the ground. Also due to its small size it can navigate collapsed buildings and toxic environments while still being able to safely fly close to humans. The company’s team lead Patrick Thevoz announced that with this new funding, they will be able to commercially develop their project within a year.

According the Minister of Cabinet Affairs in the UAE, “The UAE Drones for Good Award is a tangible outcome of the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to make optimal use of innovation and technology for the service of humanity.” We at Sky High Images applaud this commitment to setting global benchmarks and demonstrating how UAV’s can be used to benefit our daily lives. We encourage more governments and private organizations to promote similar innovative efforts that demonstrate UAV’s capacity to transform the world, make it a better place to live as well as to inspire new breakthroughs in this burgeoning field.