42 AUSTRALIAN AVIATION
the drone industry is farm work, and
he is convinced drones will help to
keep younger people on the farm.
A former military intelligence
specialist regularly based in and
around the Oakey Army Aviation
Centre, King says he chose nearby
Toowoomba to establish what he
claims is the biggest drone showroom
in Australia because of the city’s
agricultural linkage – close to the
produce centre of the Lockyer Valley
and within striking distance of the
sorghum and grain heartlands of
western Queensland.
King extols the virtues of using
drones on farms for tasks including
crop spraying, spraying in areas
inaccessible because of difficult terrain
limited more by battery life than the
weight of the aircraft, crop stress
analysis and crop health including
available water levels.
“For example we were involved in
a government trial on an olive farm
with six spots to cover on the same
paddock. The drone took 17 minutes
with 11.2 litres of chemical mixture.
A tractor over the same distance used
210 litres of chemical and took an
hour and three minutes.
“The industry is still developing
and there are lots of jobs out there
that have never been done before by a
drone,” he said.
As an example of a recent
innovative farm application, he said
imagery of a crop can be used to sell to
market pre-harvest.
“Sorghum is an excellent example
where you have an A and a B
class grain. Price can be dictatedby the quality of the sorghum by
appearance.”
Universal Drones also runs a
training school for drone pilots.
“We get a good spread of ages at the
school including a lot of older people.
We find the best guy to fly a drone on
a farm is an older farmer. He’s tired- his body can’t cope with the tractor
and other heavy work. The drone is a
great alternative.”
National Drones, with offices in
Sydney and Archerfield, south of
Brisbane, has seen greatest recent
growth in asset management using
drones, particularly of relatively
inaccessible assets such as cell phone
and radio tower peaks, and roof
inspections.
CEO Ben Harris said more
sophisticated drones linked to
improvements in software have
become a very effective tool for
collecting data without having to
relocate an aircraft – “3D mapping,
volumetric calculations for mine
stockpiles, that kind of thing”.
He said battery life, a limitation on
drone capability, was now starting to
improve with some commercial rotor
type systems offering 45-60 minutes
battery life compared with 30 to 40
minutes previously.
Both King and Harris agree that
regulation is the “elephant in the
room” of drone development, though
both empathise with CASA wrestling
with such a complex issue. “CASA
is fairly proactive about industry
engagement, but for them it is a tough
job trying to regulate an industry that
changes as you watch it,” Harris said.
It is a subject dear to the heart of
Peter La Franchi who, apart from
his professional life as an executive
with MDA Corporation, holds a key
management role with Australian
Certified UAV Operators Inc.
(ACUO) – a wholly voluntary industry
association formed specifically to look
after the interests of the commercial
drone industry in Australia.
“Regulation from an economic
point of view can be a great thing.
An enabler that can open up all sorts
of possibilities. Think, for example,
about standards. If you don’t have
common standards in manned
aviation then you have no real means
to certify that an aircraft is safe to
fly,” he said.
“We are still a long way from
having standards in the unmanned
systems industry ... drones are aircraft.
We expect the best of our aviation
system and it’s up to drones to comply
with and to meet stringent safety goals
Bell is one of a number of
major aerospace companies
developing electric VTOL
drones for Uber’s Elevate
program.BELLGoogle’s Project Wing trialled
package delivery over multiple
test flights near Canberra.
X DEVELOPMENTDrone disruption