AAM Document from FAA, SCARY Iowa State Bill, Aloft Air Boss Function

Welcome to the weekly UAS News update. We have three stories for you. The first one is about Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), something is happening with the FAA, and we’ll talk about that. We also have a bill in Iowa that we don’t really care for, so we’re going to be discussing this as well. Lastly, there’s a new function from Air Control, which is called Airbus. We’ll be talking about all these things. We are live here in Denver from AUVSI Exponential, right in front of our booth. It’s the end of day two, so everybody’s gone. So we’ll get to the news in a second.

AAM: Advanced Air Mobility

The first thing this week is AAM, Advanced Air Mobility. The FAA has released a new document, as they do for a bunch of other things. It’s called a Concept of Operation (ConOps) and this is version 2.0.

The reason I talk about this is because there’s some information in here about how the FAA is going to be spacing out different types of operations in the sky, including UAS, of course, but also including AAM, Advanced Air Mobility. As a matter of fact, as I look right here to my right, the booth of NASA is right here and in the booth of the FAA is right next to them.

NASA has this information where they’re talking about how they’re going to separate these aircraft from main aircraft, but also from UAS. It’s a long document, I’m not going to lie, I’m not done reading it just yet. There’s about 40 or 50 pages. I like to go through these documents. I will probably do a full video explaining how this works. This is a step forward.

The FAA is usually involved with NASA to create these concepts and then eventually they go and put this into play over the next few years. One of the critiques that I would have is that there is no direct timeline in here. It’s just an open timeline for the next decade, possibly the next 20 years. We don’t know, but at least we have a roadmap that we’re going to follow.

Concerning Iowa bill

The second story this week is a bill in Iowa that is kind of concerning. They were proposing three things at this stage that are standing out inside this bill. The first one is that you would get a misdemeanor if you flew a drone over a house or a farm outside of city limits, which is kind of mind-blowing to me.

The second one is that if this was just for a drone. If you have a camera that is actually attached to the drone, then the penalty becomes even more severe.

The last thing is that if you are sued for flying your drone, it’s not even talking about the two things we just talked about, if you’re sued for flying your drone, then they would prevent you from flying for two years after you are being sued.

These politicians are just out of their mind at this stage, are trying to create as many of these bills as possible. Hopefully, this dies down in the water very soon. But if you’re in Iowa, make sure that you let us know if you plan on attending any of these meetings to go against this type of bill. This is not a good thing.

Aloft Air Control

The last thing this week is a new feature from Aloft Air Control. They’re adding the ability to do what they called an Air Boss. Now, if you’re not familiar with what the Air Boss concept is, this is something that is being used, for example, at air shows where you have one person in charge of the airspace controlling all the aircraft around.

Now, they’re taking this through the UAS world, which is a term that has been used for a while now, and they are allowing someone to be in charge of the airspace over an operation, perhaps for public safety, for example. This allows people to grant permission for aircraft to enter the airspace or to prevent someone from entering the airspace, or at least to know that they are in the airspace. This helps people to separate different traffic and know where everyone is.

This is a cool feature, and we’ll hear more, I’m sure, about these types of features. We actually had John, the CEO of Air Control, in our booth this afternoon to talk about a bunch of other features they’re working on, so we’re pretty excited.

Okay, that’s it. That’s all we have. I know it’s kind of short, maybe it’s long, I’m not sure. We’ve been recording for a while now. It’s the end of the day. We’re going to come back tomorrow for one more day, and then we’ll have some cool video footage for you of everything that we’ve seen here.

This is a massive convention with a ton of manufacturers from all over the world, a ton of providers of different components, and we’re pretty excited to be here. So, we’ll see you next week.