One of my clients, ARC Aero Systems, has been part of a project to examine the use of Cargo UAVs as an infrastructure component in the north of Scotland.
ARC has a 440kg winged, transitioning UAV that has been flown full envelope overseas. This was designed and built (under our watchful eye) by our external team and a fine job they did for us.
We were based at the airport in Wick which is a beautiful town on the Scottish coast. I had overall responsibility, but it was more a figurehead role because of the competence of the team at ARC and I had the pleasure of watching the team operate like a well oiled machine and taking a measure of undeserved credit.
What was remarkable was the extent to which we have to mitigate all of the possible risks for the CAA (the UK version of the FAA). We did a very limited flight of 100m, we never left a hover and were tethered at all times.
To repeat – this aircraft has flown at full envelope. It is transitioned to wingbourne flight and back multiple times.
The caution of our airworthiness authorities is somewhat ridiculous, especially for a flight like this where we were in a remote part of Scotland with multiple mitigations (geofencing and kill switches) from a small (former world war II) airfield on a day without any scheduled flights. The flight took over six months to arrange permissions for.
We will not be able to make any use of commercial UAVs in the current regulatory situation. So if you are waiting for a cargo drone delivery system in your neighborhood don’t hold your breath – write to your politicians.
To help others and provide a pathway for change, are you able to elaborate on the causes cited by the CAA for the delays? Did they just make up excuses or were there genuine concerns? Without that context, this is just some figurehead whining. 🙂
[BTW, your comment window doesn’t scroll properly.]
the process and response time was slow. Whenever you submit anythign to a regulator you have to plan for at least one set of comments (in my experience nothing is accepted without comment) so the time taken to go through the negotiations of the acceptable restrictions (which were absurd: Tether, kill switches, geofencing, remote location, etc) the initial submittal, review, comments, re submittal and acceptance was very, very long. Bear in mind that this UAV has flown to full envelope and transitioned from hover to wing bourne flight and back multiple times (in a different jusrisidiction). The flight we got permission for was a hover that transitioned for 100m of travel along the runway of the airport and land.