Drone rules make bug tracking a difficult task

Chelsea Scott and Ramon Arrowsmith, like many seismologists, track faults. As tectonic researchers at Arizona State University, they need to know where the fault is, how much it is moving, and how it behaves beneath the surface. Small unmanned aerial systems, also known as drones, provide high-resolution images that capture the necessary information at the centimeter scale — higher resolution than some commonly used and easily accessible airborne or satellite datasets.

However, collecting drone data along the fault is not an easy task.

Bigger is better

Arrowsmith said a 7.0-magnitude earthquake could produce a 62-mile (100-kilometre) rupture with a surface displacement of about 3 feet (1 meter). “You need a ruler good enough to measure [that]He said, any images collected from the drones can be easily provided. The problem, he said, quickly covers a distance of 62 miles. Almost every country that regulates drone operations recommends or requires pilots to maintain visual contact with their drones.

One way to solve the problem is to use a larger drone. Cheap, heavy quadcopters – helicopters that can take off and land easily – are small compared to lightweight, fixed-wing drones that look like small planes.

In February 2020, Scott and three colleagues spent nearly 4 days mapping 25 miles (40 kilometers) of the San Andreas Fault in Southern California. Despite their owning quadcopters, Scott said, “the backbone was the fixed-wing drone.”

“Because fixed-wing drones are very expensive, the flight is planned very carefully, and unfortunately the project ended if the drone crashed.”

The average quadcopter can be spotted approximately half a mile (0.8 km) away; Scott said that mapping long linear features like faults requires the drone to land, move to a new location, and launch it again multiple times. With fixed-wing drones, bigger really is better; Anyone dedicated to monitoring the drone can see the vehicle about three-quarters of a mile (1.2 kilometers) away on clear days.

Additionally, because quadcopters are so heavy, they can typically only manage about 15 minutes of data acquisition, while a fixed-wing drone can fly for about an hour, Scott said.

Scott said launching and landing the fixed-wing UAVs require the operator to have enough space. In particular, landing requires about 100 feet (30 m) of a temporary runway free of any obstructions, including boulders larger than gravel. Because fixed-wing drones are so expensive, she said, “the flight is planned very carefully, and unfortunately the project ends if the drone crashes.”

Lax laws, strict laws

“If you are deploying a drone in a different country, you have to keep in mind what [its] “The rules are,” said Jean-Francois Smkins, an Oxford volcanologist who works on drone campaigns. Some countries have fewer regulations and greater flexibility, he said, while countries like the United States have stricter guidelines.

Two months of tracking fault lines in Kyrgyzstan using quadcopters went smoothly by Ian Pearce, a seismologist at the University of Oxford. He and his collaborators from the Kyrgyz Institute of Seismology worked closely with the government to collect data to produce high-resolution topographic models. Using this data, they can easily map the errors that divide the country.

Arrowsmith, who briefly joined Peres in Kyrgyzstan, said a lack of knowledge of rules and regulations in other countries could cause problems. “[Working] closely with our colleagues [ensures] We are working with the right oversight.”

Pierce agreed. “Working with local government collaborators,” he said, the military would often wave their squad in an area or even help out with work. In addition to Kyrgyzstan’s beauty and flaws, Pierce said, one of the reasons he chose to work there was the ease with which this type of research could be conducted.

Height problems and collaborative solutions

In the United States, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 107 authorization allows commercial drone pilots (the category under which university researchers fall) to operate drones weighing less than 55 pounds (25 kg, including equipment) during the day within sight line . Scott said that this license allows pilots to fly drones at an altitude of 400 feet (120 meters) relative to terrain or built structures.

Pearce said many off-the-shelf drones regulate altitude themselves, staying 400 feet below the take-off point. He said, “If the terrain is rapidly increasing further away from you, you may not reach 400 feet [much] above the ground.”

In the United States, to fly at altitudes greater than 400 feet, drone operators need a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Certificate of Authorization, or COA, that outlines project plans and operations, said Henry Cathy, director of New Mexico State University for Drones. . Flight Systems Test Site (NMSU UAS), one of seven such sites.

“A lot of scientific questions are still out of sight.”

Cathy said that under the New Mexico website’s COA, “we require certain background and training for our pilots.” He said that all the pilots on this site not only have a Part 107 license, but they also have their own pilot licenses.

Flying above 400 feet, Cathy said, “We have a COA that allows us to fly anywhere in the United States up to 1,200 feet (366 metres).” They also have 15,000 square miles (38,850 square kilometers) of COA airspace in southern New Mexico where their pilots can fly drones up to 10,000 feet (3,048 m), often with chase planes and prior coordination with air traffic control. An agreement with Spaceport America also allows them to fly from Earth to space within the adjacent White Sands missile range.

Industry, university, and federal researchers pay to use the NMSU UAS Flight Test site, as usually “each group is trying to do something [with drones] Kathy said. One of the purposes of these FAA websites, he said, is to help provide flight data to the FAA as needs evolve. Night operations, flights beyond visible line of sight, package delivery, and technologies that help aircraft detect and avoid each other are part of the FAA’s roadmap that charts the future of drones in the United States.

Regulations that evolve with technology will be welcomed by researchers. “A lot of scientific questions are still out of the field of view,” Arrowsmith said.

—Alka Tripathy-Lang (@DrAlkaTrip), science writer

Quote: Tripathy-Lang, A. (2021), Drone rules make bug tracking difficult, EOS, 102, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EO210537. Posted on October 6, 2021. Text © 2021. authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unless otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without the express permission of the copyright owner is prohibited. Related

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