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FAA Clears Ag Company to Fly Drones

Dan Miller
By  Dan Miller , Progressive Farmer Senior Editor
An Idaho company can now legally fly UASs like this eBee over farm fields to collect data. (Photo courtesy Empire Unmanned)

An Idaho-based company has received the first exemption from federal aviation rules to fly an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) for commercial agricultural purposes.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted an exemption to Advanced Aviation Solutions of Star, Idaho, for the purpose of precision scouting. It was the FAA's 13th exemption since 2012.

While the exemption allows Advanced Aviation to work anywhere in the U.S., the company intends to perform crop scouting over flights in Idaho, eastern Washington and eastern Oregon when it begins operations as early as the coming planting season. The company also is talking with Washington State University and the University of Idaho to see how it might support their agricultural research work.

"This is huge," said Robert Blair, of Three Canyon Farms outside Kendrick, Idaho. "We are able to fly legally and commercially to provide an imaging service to customers."

Blair is an internationally recognized advocate of unmanned aircraft systems for agriculture. He is a founding member of the consortium of businesses that include Advanced Aviation Solutions, Empire Airlines, of Hayden, Idaho and himself. He and those entities have formed a company called Empire Unmanned to do agricultural flying with headquarters in Hayden.

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The exemption is a significant step for the FAA and for the agricultural aerial sensing industry, which has been long waiting to be born. While farmers have been undoubtedly sending unmanned systems -- planes, helicopters, and the like -- over their fields for some time, those flights have been conducted outside current law. While the FAA has devoted few resources to enforcement, the agency did last summer make it clear that these operations, while potentially high in value, were also highly illegal. Violators face fines up to $10,000.

"It was a clarification that narrowly defined commercial operations," Blair said. "Up until June 18, [2014], farmers were operating in a gray area, as hobbyists. What the FAA did was define what a hobby was, versus commercial. For example, I could fly my garden because I, and my family, consume the crops. That, versus sending up UASs over fields from which I sell the crops."

The Advanced Aviation Solutions exemption begins to change all that. "[The exemption] gives the FAA a test case to see how UASs can be integrated into the national airspace for agricultural purposes," Blair said.

For potential customers of Empire Unmanned, the FAA exemption creates the opportunity for farmers to legally add an aerial crop scouting capability to the precision data they are already collecting. "We are legally able to operate and our customers are covered under our insurance," said Brad Ward, chief pilot for Empire Unmanned and vice president of Advanced Aviation Solutions. Insurability is critical for agricultural operations that are all too aware of the liability hazards businesses face in today's legal environment, Ward said.

Empire Unmanned will use a fixed-wing, 1.5-pound eBee Ag drone manufactured by senseFly Ltd, a Swiss company based in Cheseaux-Lausanne (www.sensefly.com). The company develops, assembles and markets mini-drones and related software for applications such as mapping mining sites, quarries, forests, construction sites and crops. The foam-and-carbon construction, battery-operated eBee is a hand-launched aerial vehicle. It has a 38-inch wingspan with a flight time of up to 45 minutes. It can fly up to 56 miles per hour. Its cameras produce an image with a ground sampling distance down to 0.79 inch per pixel.

Flying 3,000 feet above the ground, the eBee can scout up to nearly 2,500 acres in a single flight. It has been tested at altitudes of up to 5,200 meters above sea level. But for Empire Unmanned, the eBee will be working well below its service ceiling. The FAA exemption allows the eBee to fly no more than 400 feet above the ground, and under the control of a two-person team. The first person is a pilot who must have an FAA private pilot certificate and current medical certificate. The second member of the team is an observer who scouts the airspace for potential hazards while the UAS is in operation. The eBee must be flown line of sight and outside of a five-mile radius from airports and FAA-mapped airstrips. Empire Unmanned also will have to file flight plans 48 hours in advance of operations.

"Now the real work begins," Blair said. The UAS industry in the U.S. is well aware of the potential for aerial imagery. But the reality of the first exemption for agriculture gives an encouraging nudge to aerial crop sensing and imaging hardware developers. It will also encourage software companies to write increasingly sophisticated programs that blend aerial sensing output with ground-based precision agricultural systems.

More, the exemption will open the door to investment. "There is a certainty now," Blair said. "Now you can go to investors and start talking business models." The FAA believes the UAS industry will grow to as much as $98 billion in 10 years, with 7,500 commercial drones in operation even before that.

Initially, Empire Unmanned will provide aerial imagery in the full-color and the red, blue and green color spectrums and the near-infrared spectrum. The images are exportable to precision software packages to create an information layer that assists producers in making crop management decisions. The images give farm managers an efficient way to scout crops, sorting areas that are growing normally from areas that need additional attention because of insect, disease or weed infestations, or weather anomalies.

Another use for UAS craft is the ability to scout for crop damage for the purpose of insurance settlements. Blair, for example, has suffered mightily from elk that do widespread damage in his wheat fields. Aerial photographs would help him prove the damages he has incurred.

"This is a capable little system," said Ward. "senseFly bent over backwards to help us out." In addition to its geo-referenced camera systems, the craft features an incident light sensor. The sensor captures brightness data so that pictures taken on different days under different lighting conditions can be compared to one another.

This exemption brings the total to 14 exemptions for companies in the areas of real estate, filmmaking, surveying, construction-site monitoring and oil rig flare stack inspections. The FAA has now received a total of 214 requests for exemptions.

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