NEWS & BLOG

Content from "Robot Eyes in the Skies" By Ryan Cunningham & Keith Cunnningham, PhD.

Unmanned aircraft are a huge presence in the popular imagination. Remotely piloted aircraft are constantly in the news: the military uses them for battlefield reconnaissance and for delivering supplies; they are the linchpin of counter-terrorism operations; and plans by police forces to use them for tactical surveillance have sparked public controversy. In an amusing turn, businesses have considered using drones to deliver tacos, hot pizza, and cold beer. And in 2010 even President Obama joked about using a Predator strike to protect his daughters from the Jonas Brothers’ affections.

Drones were originally developed by the military for aerial gunnery practice. But the military and the Federal Government no longer have a monopoly on unmanned aircraft systems.In the coming years unmanned aircraft will begin to replace conventional aircraft in a range of civilian and commercial applications.

Unmanned aircraft systems excel in performing flights not well suited for manned aircraft. They are often employed in tasks that fall under the rubric of what the industry calls the 4-Ds—tasks that are dull, difficult, dirty, or dangerous. The military drone pilot can sit comfortably in an air-conditioned room thousands of miles away, and the aircraft’s pilot crew can operate in shifts. As a result, the aircraft can stay operational during long missions. Remote piloting further allows the aircraft to be deployed in areas and perform tasks that would expose a conventional aircraft’s pilot to physical harm. These advantages can be realized equally by military and civilian operators.

Unmanned aircraft systems have a number of other advantages over manned aircraft. They can operate under low clouds that would prevent manned aircraft operations. Small unmanned aircraft systems do not require the complicated and expensive aerospace infrastructure needed by larger aircraft. They can easily be operated from austere locations far from commercial airstrips. Some systems can be launched from and recovered by ships at sea or dropped from a balloon. Small unmanned aircraft systems can even be carried by hand in a briefcase. Some drones are literally the size of insects.

However, regulations governing unmanned aircraft system operations in the United States are strict and vigorously enforced by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) because of aviation safety issues. Currently, all commercial operations in the United States are prohibited from using unmanned aircraft systems without special waivers from the FAA. The rules currently enforced date to 1981 and were created for model aircraft operations (FAA 1981). In 2012 Congress responded to the stringency of these controls by passing the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, which directed the FAA to implement standards for the safe operation of unmanned aircraft systems in the national airspace.

An explosion of new commercial unmanned aircraft system activity is expected in the United States when the agency releases the new standards in 2015. The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International estimates that as many as 10,000 unmanned aircraft could be flying in the national airspace within 5 years, creating 100,000 jobs and $13.7 billion for the U.S. economy (Space Daily 2013).

However, drones are already in use in other countries with more liberal flight safety regulations and in countries without regulations. Property mapping and surveying figure prominently in unmanned aircraft system applications in many of these countries.

Drone technology could revolutionize property mapping, measurements, and assessment practices. Unmanned aircraft systems equipped with high resolution cameras can perform the same tasks as manned aircraft more frequently and at a lower cost. Unmanned aircraft systems can easily collect on-demand appraisal imagery, and oblique imagery taken from a low altitude would give assessors a more detailed look at properties. Even more exciting is a new imaging technology evolving along with unmanned aircraft system platforms that can create three-dimensional computer renderings from oblique aerial imagery. Unmanned aircraft systems are ideally suited for these types of missions.

In a few years it is conceivable that a property appraiser could unpack from a briefcase a small helicopter drone, program it to fly over a new subdivision, and use the resulting high-resolution imagery for property valuations. Unmanned aircraft systems have the potential to be a disruptive technology for assessing officers worldwide.

A Transformative Technology

The remote sensing capabilities of unmanned aircraft systems will allow surveyors, mappers, and assessors to collect high-quality imagery with greater frequency and flexibility. This is not a far-off pipe dream— the sophistication of unmanned aircraft systems sensing technology has already been demonstrated in projects like search and rescue and wildlife population studies.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks has been a leader in the use of unmanned aircraft system technologies for a wide variety of applications, in part because it is the only university operating a rocket range. As a result, it has decades of experience in managing its airspace during rocket launches. Examples of the university’s activities include working with oil companies to monitor infrastructure and oil spill response, working with biologists to count seals and sea lions, surveying archaeological sites, conducting search-and-rescue missions, monitoring wildfires, and assisting Alaska native villages with property surveys.

As with all technology, unmanned aircraft systems are experiencing rapid improvements in capabilities. An excellent example is a count of Steller sea lions in the Aleutian Islands last winter. A small quad-copter was tested in rain and snow, as well as in high winds. The unmanned aircraft system performed well in the extreme weather and was able to collect high-resolution images that were easily mosaicked. These mosaics permitted biologists to count and classify the sea lions by age and sex. The detail of these images is such that biologists studying sea lions in the Aleutian Islands were able to identify the sex of individual animals. In fact, the images were good enough to read the brands marking the animals that allow biologists to track the animals’ Pacific migrations. The quad-rotor is capable of vertical takeoff and landing, making it a very flexible system for operating from a ship at sea, even in high waves and strong winds.

The Future of Property Assessment

Property assessment by unmanned aircraft systems is on the cusp of reality. Drones will allow assessors to do their jobs more frequently, efficiently, and effectively. Nevertheless, a variety of operational and legal issues remain to be resolved so that unmanned aircraft can be safely integrated with manned aircraft in the national airspace. As is the case with all revolutionary technologies, laws and regulations are struggling to keep up with the technology’s potential and its possibilities for misuse. But the very potential of unmanned aircraft systems technology lies in its challenge to the status quo. Unmanned aircraft have already changed the way we think about aerial data collection.The future for unmanned aircraft systems, in fact, is now

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