US drone regulation has made slow but steady progress in approving safe, advanced drone operations. For those new to this niche topic, approving advanced commercial drone operations could look like fully autonomous power grid inspections – critical to restoring power infrastructure after a storm. Or autonomous delivery of food and medical supplies (or online shopping orders).  Over the past decade, large-scale, streamlined Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) approvals have been the “holy grail” of regulatory approvals – but they’ve always felt just out of reach.  That is, until the emergence of the nationwide BVLOS approval.

BVLOS approvals transformed: from bureaucratic nightmare to zero friction 

Previously, organizations would have to apply for case-by-case, site-by-site approval to operate the drones from a remote location. Applications were evaluated by the FAA individually, with the average wait time coming in at around 3 months to a year. Moreover, advanced approvals were only accessible for companies with the right resources and know-how, and even then were often granted for test purposes. Because regulatory processes were so cumbersome, many organizations would resort to using piloted drone services. These services are often costly, with limited availability and no immediate response or situational awareness.

In stark contrast, the nationwide BVLOS approval is the most advanced, large-scale operational approval ever given out by the FAA. It allows organizations to operate Percepto drones remotely from day one. The groundbreaking approval enables those organizations to leverage automated drone operations easily – without jumping through bureaucratic hoops. 

The last regulatory hurdle

In the last 10 years, drone technology advancements have enabled organizations to leverage drones for frequent infrastructure inspections, deliveries, emergency response and more. But the FAA has struggled to safely integrate drones into the airspace alongside manned aircrafts. As a result, BVLOS approvals provided by the FAA as of today include personnel, usually a Visual Observer (VO), on site to deconflict the airspace, namely to guarantee the drone is not risking any other aircraft.  While many commercial applications are enabled with a VO on site, such as monitoring industrial facilities, for other use cases however, such as power line or railway inspections and deliveries, the VO introduces significant operational challenges, namely additional costs, limited frequency and availability. 

In response, in December, 2021 the FAA established the BVLOS Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) – a committee of drone regulation stakeholders and experts tasked with recommending a streamlined path for BVLOS operations. The BVLOS ARC announcement held the promise of a rule to govern complex operations, more commonly known as the “BVLOS rule”, which would allow organizations meeting the rule’s criteria to operate BVLOS without applying for individual approvals. The BVLOS ARC made their recommendations for a new complex operations rule to the FAA, who are still working to establish the rule to streamline BVLOS approvals.

Only a handful of BVLOS waivers have been granted without personnel on site, mainly in the case of an emergency, or for testing purposes. The next step for the FAA is to provide a regulatory path forward for BVLOS operations without personnel on site – or what the FAA calls highly automated BVLOS. 

The future of commercial drones and highly automated BVLOS

Highly automated BVLOS is the future of commercial drone operations. It will enable organizations (again, think power restoration, refinery maintenance, medical delivery, consumer delivery, etc.) to operate drones remotely without any personnel on site, not even a VO. For any use case, this increases operational speed and frequency, enables business continuity, and will increase the value and overall adoption of commercial drone technology. 

With mature, reliable drone solutions, BVLOS ops have proven safe to operate over people and critical infrastructure. The last remaining safety concern is how to operate drones in coordination with other aircrafts, gliders and drones flying in the same airspace. 

Today, we see highly automated BVLOS being approved in one of two ways: 

• Technological solution – a detect and avoid solution, relying on a combination of technologies such as radars, cameras and Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM). This would apply to all drone operations under an altitude of 400 feet. 
• Operational solution – drone flight within approximately 100 feet from any infrastructure, close enough so that no other aircraft would be operating there. 

In the future, highly automated BVLOS will be accessible to all – from industry stakeholders to drone operators – under the BVLOS rule. The recommendation by the BVLOS ARC proposes that the rule will organize the national airspace such that under ~400 feet, drones, not manned aircrafts, will have the right of way. All aircrafts, manned and drones alike, would communicate their exact location via one centralized, nationwide UTM. In this proposed rule, the need for costly technological solutions or complex operational solutions would be eliminated. More importantly, such a BVLOS rule would deliver a safe, accessible and complete solution for highly automated BVLOS drone operations, unlocking the full potential of drones in our day-to-day lives.

In 2023, regulatory hurdles take their leave 

For the past 10 years, the FAA has been cautiously inching forward towards streamlined highly automated drone operations. In 2023 we’ll see the fruits of their labor, with more nationwide BVLOS approvals and more highly automated BVLOS approvals. This process is the foundation for the next nationwide highly automated BVLOS approval – the holy grail we are waiting for – until a permanent BVLOS law will come into effect.

When my co-founders and I founded Percepto back in 2014, we recognized that inspection of large industrial sites and infrastructure, such as refineries, power grids, mines, etc., was ripe for automation. By automating a process that has historically been done manually, we could prevent outages and environmental disasters, while significantly impacting heavy industrial sites’ bottom line.

Consider, a downed power grid can lead to hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars in damages. Or the damage a gas leak can do if it goes undetected due to poor inspection. And the risk of sending an employee to inspect towers at a nuclear power plant.

We saw a clear, and massive, need and value for automating visual inspections. And we quickly understood that this is a complex, multifaceted challenge requiring an equally complex and intricate solution.

Industrial visual inspections disrupted

We’ve been working on that solution since our founding. We have spent years developing innovative technology to enhance inspections.

It was clear from the beginning that drone technology needs to play a big part in this story of automating and optimizing inspections. And in order to fully automate these processes to achieve the inspection frequency and quality needed to prevent downtime caused by power outages or oil leaks for example, we needed autonomous drones to be always available on site, these are also known as a drone-in-a-box.

So when we began, our focus as a company was on developing the most robust and intelligent drone-in-a-box on the market. And we succeeded, with our flagship drone-in-a-box Percepto Air Max (previously known as the Sparrow).

Top companies across multiple industries such as thermal energy, mining, heavy industrial, etc., finally had the tool they were so eager to have – to boost employee safety, minimize environmental footprint, and slash their downtime. And those companies, including – Koch Industries, Florida Power & Light, Verizon, Delek US, and Enel – completely disrupted their regular inspection methods, which for large enterprises is not easy.

These clients liked the results and the value they were seeing – but they still needed more. They wanted to connect all of their visual data to the same Percepto software managing the Air Max drone-in-a-box visual data. And they wanted even more AI-powered insights.

So we listened to our clients, and in November 2020 we unveiled Percepto AIM – Autonomous Inspection and Monitoring enterprise software. As the first-ever enterprise solution enabling truly autonomous visual data management, AIM was a game changer. AIM manages a fleet of robots residing on site collecting visual data, and automatically generates AI-powered insights relevant for various stakeholders (i.e. maintenance, compliance, and security officers). It remains the only solution on the market that solves the most challenging inspection-related workflows – data collection, data management and data analysis, all in one platform. We couldn’t be more proud and excited seeing it selected by TIME as one of 2021’s most groundbreaking solutions, who recognized AIM’s ability to minimize risk, pollution and even prevent large-scale environmental disasters.

In heavy industry, automation and drone use is now seen as the standard in inspection practices. Our 2021 solution, combining powerful autonomous robots with AI-powered visual data management is the nuanced and advanced solution industrial sites today can rely on to reduce risk, costs and environmental impact.

Aiming higher, and lighter

Since we laid the groundwork for visual inspection automation with Percepto AIM and Percepto Air Max, we’ve been striving to tackle a few more of our client and market challenges – namely the fact that “one size doesn’t fit all”.

Different industries and companies have different inspection needs. They may need more accuracy, like the mining industry, which relies on highly accurate volumetric measurements to monitor productivity and plan shipments. Or special sensors, like the oil & gas industry, whose main concern is preventing leaks and detecting specific gasses as soon as they appear.

Some companies have different inspection needs internally for their different facilities. Like a power company that needs a heavy-duty, ruggedized drone solution at their substations and nuclear energy facilities, but a lighter and more mobile drone solution to monitor their entire power grid.

And sometimes facilities don’t need a drone. They may need a ground robot, like Spot®, indoors. Or they may have fixed cameras already looking at the right assets, but are missing the visual data management, analysis and reporting capabilities.

The list goes on. And we compiled that list, packaged it up and delivered it in our latest solution upgrade. 

We developed AIM 2022 and a new drone-in-a-box. We created a mobile app, and offer fully automated integrations with DJI drones and fixed cameras. And together, these solutions offer companies the ability to automate their visual inspections in whatever way works best for them.

What’s in AIM 2022

Building on the success of AIM 2021, AIM 2022 delivers yet another game changer for industrial sites – Insight Manager. Insight Manager packages the most advanced industry-specific analytics in a way that is accessible to any user. Our clients grappled with challenges of siloed data, and the need to rely on 3rd party analytics or experts to get the insights they need.

And Insight Manager eliminates those challenges. At the click of a button, any user selects the insight they need, and AIM 2022 does the rest – dispatching the correct robot for inspection, and utilizing AIM 2022’s next gen change detection framework to automatically detect anomalies, or generate volumetric measurements.

Faults are detected as soon as they happen, preventing them from turning into larger failures causing downtime, outages, or environmental catastrophe. Positive changes are also detected, and our clients leverage AIM 2022 to monitor construction projects, with each component constructed detected, counted and tracked on a map.

AIM 2022 also packs in significant user experience upgrades, addressing our client needs for greater mobility and collaboration. This includes our new mobile application, user interface upgrades, and faster and easier insight sharing. For our clients, these upgrades effectively solve organizational challenges, by removing information bottlenecks and empowering any user to automate visual inspections.

What’s in the new box

The “smallest” addition to our solution this year is Percepto Air Mobile. This smaller, lighter and as the name suggests – mobile – drone-in-a-box directly addresses client needs for a solution that can be easily deployed at multiple locations, such as a pipeline or power grid. The new solution is also weatherproof and highly ruggedized, like it’s big brother the Air Max.

In contrast to the lighter Air Mobile, the new Air Max upgrades make it the heavy-weight champion of visual inspections. With the most accurate, high-resolution sensors including new cameras and optical gas imaging (OGI), the Air Max is the only drone-in-a-box on the market capable of meeting our oil & gas client needs for effectively detecting and preventing gas leaks and unwanted emissions.

With our 2022 solution, we also introduced integrations with DJI and fixed cameras. Adding these sensors to our portfolio enables any industrial site to integrate their existing visual inspection tools into an end-to-end visual data management platform. Giving them the highest quality analytics on the market for industrial inspection, this integration delivers a critical solution for large enterprises for which “one size does not fit all.”

One solution for every industrial site

With AIM 2022, the value proposition for automating visual inspections is greater than ever. The most advanced AI in our most user friendly platform ever guarantees reduced downtime, costs, risk and environmental footprint.

And our solution is now so versatile, that any company in any industry can begin automating visual inspections at their facilities where they need it most. For some, that may look like a software only solution to upload data from existing on-site sensors into Percepto AIM. For others, it may be using DJI drones with automatic visual data collection and management. And for the most complex industrial environments, there’s the flagship Percepto Air Max.

Autonomous visual inspections are becoming the standard, best practice at heavy industrial sites. And with a flexible, adaptable solution, we’re aiming to automate inspections at every green energy facility, power grid, pipeline, and more.

With AIM 2022, we believe we have paved the way for every industry and every industrial site to use drones and robots at their worksite for visual inspection. Since we have put in countless hours to develop and fine-tune our solution, we were determined to make it accessible to all. Because our vision for all facilities and infrastructure to automate visual inspections means a brighter, safer future for everyone.

Key stakeholders have been demanding autonomous drone flight for years – and
regulators are finally defining clear pathways for the disruptive technology.

Industry leaders have been promising the mass integration of autonomous drones into the national airspace, and hence our daily lives for years. In 2013, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos first unveiled his vision for autonomous drone delivery. Since then, VCs have poured funds into young companies looking to use drones technology to disrupt industries from deliveries, journalism and industrial inspection all the way to actual flying cars. 

Yet, for the most part the huge market disruption envisioned for drones seems to be moving much slower than expected. What’s the holdup? 

Regulatory hurdles. They’re slowing the further advances of drone technology that promises to change industry. 

Since 2016 when Part 107 was released, which enabled businesses to use piloted drones for commercial work, the FAA has been pressured by both industry and government (possibly the only point agreed on by both President Barack Obama and Donald Trump) to enable the industry to move forward. In order to do so, there needs to be clear regulations enabling two main drone operations:

1. Flight Beyond the operator Visual Line Of Site (also known as BVLOS) – BVLOS is probably the biggest buzzword in drone regulation, and it would remove the current need for a drone pilot to monitor each drone that flies. The FAA has yet to fully enable commercial BVLOS flight.
2. Flight over people – which would enable commercial flights over populated areas. This year, the FAA implemented its Operations over People rule, enabling certified drone models to fly over people.  

When can we expect the FAA to enable BVLOS flights? 

For anyone following the drone industry, discussing BVLOS operation feels like a never ending discussion, as autonomous drone technology has been around for years, yet regulators haven’t found a way to safely integrate it. But in June 2021, the FAA announced that a new BVLOS Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) has commenced. The BVLOS ARC represents a large-scale collaboration between the drone industry and regulators, and is made up of 86 organizations including 6 selected drone manufacturers. The ARC will make their first round of recommendations to the FAA for the brand new rule regulating BVLOS flight within 6 months, and we expect the new rule to take effect in the next 2-3 years. 

The new BVLOS regulation will change everything. Fully autonomous drone flights. No pilots. No human involvement. 

That means we will finally see drones implemented at scale as a network of robots providing various vital services for us. In the next few years, you should expect to see autonomous drones flying around delivering packages, inspecting power lines, solar farms, cell towers and bridges. The many applications enabled are demonstrated by the range of drone companies who work closest with the FAA. 

For Amazon, BVLOS regulation means fully autonomous consumer deliveries. For other drone delivery companies like Zipline, BVLOS regulation means fully autonomous delivery of vital medical supplies. 

And for industrial drones like Percepto’s, it means fully autonomous monitoring of the country’s most risky, complex facilities. On a larger scale, it offers companies responsible for our critical infrastructure the promise of employing a fleet of drones to manage and maintain all of their infrastructure from anywhere in the country. 

This new regulation will revolutionize industries and change lives when it comes into effect in the next few years. And in the meantime, the industry will continue to move forward within the existing regulatory framework. 

How should the industry proceed until the BVLOS rule is in place? 

Since the BVLOS rule will take time to form, the rules the FAA has put in place up until now will still allow field-proven companies to apply for operational approvals to fly BVLOS and over people.

This year the FAA released two new rules – Remote ID rule and Operations over People rule. Each rule addresses a regulatory barrier to drone operations such as drone delivery or emergency response. 

Remote ID is critical to allow networks of drones to operate overhead without causing harm. The Remote ID rule requires drone manufacturers to identify drones in flight and the location of their control stations by 2022. This reduces the risk of drones interfering with other aircraft. 

The Operations over People rule allows certified drone models to fly over people. Previously, each operation needed to go through a time-consuming approval process even if the same drone model had been approved for a similar operation.

However to get certified, a drone model must first prove it is safe and airworthy. It does so by undergoing flight testing (coined ‘durability and reliability testing’ by the FAA). This is the Type Certification (TC) process, which the FAA first announced in 2019. Fast forward to 2021 – now the first 10 companies are in the final stages of the TC process. 

The autonomous drone revolution will look a lot different in the years to come, thanks to successful industry and regulator collaboration 

2021 marks a regulatory breakthrough, pushing forward autonomous drone operations. This push of course comes in line with rapidly advancing technology, which has put safety at the forefront to meet regulatory requirements. Still, the large-scale integration of autonomous drones won’t happen all at once. Rather, it will happen gradually over the next few years with more and more operational approvals given out by the FAA. 

The progress we’ve seen in 2021 proves that when society sees value in an industry, regulators can solve even the most complex problems – like integrating autonomous drones without pilots into the national airspace. This process has been long in the making, and as with all hard work – the rewards will be equally significant.