As the first commercial drones are set to take to US airspace, aviation expert Richard Woodward predicts that unmanned aircraft are to become ubiquitous in taking up dirty or dangerous work, but also infringing on people’s privacy.
RT:When people hear the word drone, they
get a little jittery. Is that justified? Why?
Richard Woodward: It is in some ways because they are about to
become ubiquitous. There is going to be hundreds of thousands of
these things. If there are any jobs that is dull, dirty or
dangerous, you will find a drone doing it.
RT:Are there any risks to civilians with
this?
RW: There are a few. First off, there is big
privacy issue because these little things can fly up over the
side of your house and look down into your yard and look into the
windows. The second thing is that there is no real designed
standard for the drones at the moment. Every civil aircraft that
we fly has very strict design standards. The drones don’t have
design standards yet and every country in the world is working on
that as fast as they can, but the technology is developing faster
than the regulations are keeping up with.
RT:Oil major BP received the first license
to use commercial drones, to oversee oilfield operations
potentially improving safety standards. Do you think this is a
positive sign perhaps?
RW: That is a positive. Surveillance is perfect job for
a drone. As I said, it will be boring to sit in a helicopter
doing it. But you can do it with a much lower cost with a drone
and get higher resolution imagery back to the control side. There
is one issue with drones: the technology is limited basically at
the moment to the line sight because of control issues. So you
can only do it where you can see the drone in the distance.
RT:Privacy is one of the big issues here.
Are you expecting a big public response to this? Is it maybe
going to grow?
RW: We will see the future drones growing
phenomenally fast. It will be one of the big industries around
the world because there is any number of applications such as
tracking and checking power lines, checking oil fields, taking
photographs of your house for sale, even making video
documentaries. So the future is vast. The control will be the
issue; otherwise we will have them everywhere. We will not have a
private moment anywhere in the world.
RT:Is there anything apart from voicing
opposition that people can do against it?
RW: We’ve got to rely on the people in the
industry controlling the development. One other thing for me as
an airline pilot: we can see in the future that we will have
these very large drones carrying cargo. Unmanned aircraft flying
in the same airspace as people traveling in passenger jets. I
don’t think it takes a very long thought to think that perhaps
that unmanned aircraft should meet the same standards as the
manned aircraft. In other words, it can avoid potential
collisions and it is built to design standards. These are issues
that the governments have got to deal with and the world will
need a National Civil Aviation Organization, which Russia is a
member of as well. So we are all working s as fast as we can to
keep up with the technology development.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.