Business models and artificial bearers

Business models to follow

There is a concern that the big UAS manufactures, Aerovironment, Insitu, BAE systems, Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin have undue influence on the FAA and giving them an unfair advantage. From the beginning I have wondered why the industry hasn’t adopted the strategy of the Japanese auto manufactures by saturating the market with low cost, low maintenance, high mileage vehicles and then once they have established a beachhead in the market come out with the higher cost, higher quality products i.e. from Toyota to Lexus, Datsun to Nissan. It appears that these established UAS manufactures have conspired with the FAA to force their high priced systems on to the market claiming because they have logged the most flight hours in combat. Look at how that worked with HUMVEE/Hummers? The market doesn’t care about combat flight hours. The investment advisors are promoting these established UAV Manufactures but they should be looking at the smart companies who have already modeled the process of the Japanese automakers and they are 3D Robotics and DJI.

These products are the perfect platforms to implement a business model Brett Gardener the director of ACADEMI’s unmanned program has been filling my ear with for a couple years now. He says “It’s going to be like the cell phone industry where they give you the cell phones and charge you for the service.” There are a number of cloud providers out there where the data can be streamed to these cloud services and analysts can download the data and do their analysis and find determine the actions needed based upon the information they glean from the imagery.

The benefit of UAS

Sure there are cost and safety benefits compared to manned aircraft but the technical benefit is the ability to slow down the imagery by the analyst sitting behind a laptop and find whatever is desired. The human eye, even with binoculars can’t deal with the movement. Gene Robinson’s Texas Equusearch is successful for this exact reason. There are hundreds of examples where he has been able to find bodies after search teams have walked past and flown over the exact areas where he went back and flown over the same area with his Spectra flying wing UAS. I really like this platform for firefighting too because of the ability to float on a thermal produced by the fire and save battery. That is a capability that is not practical with quad-rotor or from one of the UAS used by the military. It is a pusher design where the prop is in the back but he is hand launched which is an issue with most pusher design but Gene’s system knows when it is being launched and doesn’t start up until after the pilot throws it into the air.

Property rights

The news it all about the FAA restriction on unmanned aerial systems. These fly in the face of individual property rights but while studying for my real-estate broker’s license we were taught that individual property right go from the center of the earth to end of the atmosphere. The hobby restrictions are up to 400’ except in 5 miles from the path of established runways. Congress has mandated that commercial airways be open for unmanned operations. This is the law! Well the law for personal property rights is just as established. Almost three years ago I talked with Jim Williams the manager of the FAA’s unmanned program and he told me that the business owner had to be the operator of the unmanned system. I challenged him on that and then shortly after the restricted all commercial unmanned operations. The laws are already established, no matter what the FAA says that protect property owners to operate commercial equipment on their property and to contract professionals to operate equipment on their property. There are attorneys who are just waiting to take the FAA to task defending private property rights. The lines are being blurred for commercial unmanned operations for operating with authorization over private property and flying over public and private property without authorization. The model is already in place with the use of manned aircraft where the operator isn’t required to get permission from private owners or authorities governing public property. They don’t need any special permission to capture imagery or data over that private of public property.

Artificial barriers

There are plenty of examples from training flees and elephants by establishing bearers that they just get used to so those bearers are removed or now longer viable but the limits are still adhered to. This is what is happening with the restriction on the commercial use of unmanned aerial systems. Personal property right trump the FAA restrictions. They are going to challenge that but they haven’t take that to court because they know that they will lose. The mandate to open the airways by 2015 is law and they must do it. This means the same ability to fly over public and private property just like manned aircraft do now but if unmanned operations are conducted with expressed written permission by the property owner or government authority of the property of the operations are being conducted, it is authorized. Don’t take my word for it, I hear from precision agriculture UAS professionals where the FAA has turned their heads and countless news and TV stations who are using this technology right now.