View the September 18 seminar recording
Jennifer Symoun
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will moderate today's seminar. Today's topic is Delivery by Drone: Examining Benefits, Impacts, and Regulations.
Before I go any further, I do want to let those of you who are calling into the teleconference for the audio know that you need to mute your computer speakers or else you will be hearing your audio over the computer as well.
Today's seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the chat area. Please make sure you send your question to "Everyone" and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. We will also take questions over the phone if time allows and I will provide instructions on how to do so once we get to that point.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar are available for download from the file download box in the lower right corner of your screen. The presentations will also be available online within the next few weeks, along with a recording and a transcript. I will send a link to the recording in the next day or so and will also notify all attendees once all materials are posted online.
Talking Freight seminars are eligible for 1.5 certification maintenance credits for AICP members. In order to obtain credit for today's seminar, you must have logged in with your first and last name or if you are attending with a group of people you must type your first and last name into the chat box.
PDH certificates are also available for Talking Freight seminars. To receive 1.5 PDH credits, you will need to fill out a form. Please see the link in the chat box. Certificates will be emailed one week after the seminar. A seminar agenda has been included in the file download box for those who need to submit an agenda to their licensing agency.
Finally, I encourage everyone to please also download the evaluation form from the file share box and submit this form to me after you have filled it out.
Today we'll have three presentations, given by:
Our first presentation will be given by Erica Wygonik, a Director at RSG, leading the freight modeling staff. She has particular expertise in last mile delivery, using a variety of modeling and spatial analysis tools to understand environmental and congestion impacts across modes. Erica serves on TRB's Freight Transportation Planning & Logistics and Urban Freight Transportation committees, for which she serves as the Research Coordinator. Her research focuses on strategic use of home delivery and other mixed-mode transportation approaches. Erica is a PE and holds a PhD in transportation engineering from the University of Washington.
Erica Wygonik
Great, thank you, Jennifer. Thank you all for joining us today. It is fun to be here and fun to share on this topic. I think drones are just fun to talk about, so hopefully this will be interesting to everyone. I am here to talk about some of the transportation impacts are of delivery drones, especially compared to other delivery modes. I think it is a pretty interesting topic. The question of the work I'm going to talk about today has a specific delivery context in mind. We have heard a lot about, I think drones have been in the news quite a bit in terms of their potential uses for transport. Things like rural medical transport, replacing some amount of 3rd party logistics small package delivery, some people using them for remote-sensing, and there is a variety of other uses that have been considered. Today I would talk about a very specific delivery context and that has to do with kind of real-time needs.
So, this is a situation where you are hanging out at home at night and you think I am really hungry. How am I going to get something to eat? Or, my kid is sick and I need medicine for them or we have ran out of diapers and I need them right now, so, what are my options? Historically, at that point in time you would have to say I'm going to drive to the store and get whatever it is that I need, go to the restaurant and pick up my takeout or run to CVS or the pharmacy and get some medicine, diapers, or whatever it is you need at that moment. Now we have a bunch of emerging modes, which are other alternatives that should be consider. We have delivery services that you can call or use an online app or portal to request delivery of certain goods and commodities. Or now there is this potential alternative for using delivery drones for these real-time needs. But, as we know, the CO2 emissions of transportation are an important impact when we do have any sort of transport, especially with freight transportation. A big question we want to look at is what are the CO2 emissions associated with each of these particular real-time transport modes? The specific research question we were looking at: What are the CO2 emissions from delivery of small items? This is looking directly to customers. So, what are the CO2 emissions of these trips as compared to customers going to the stores themselves, using a drone instead of going to the store themselves? Or to using an on-demand delivery service like Uber Eats, Postmates, or Door Dash?
So, any good research project starts with a literature review and frames the question. Unfortunately, in this case, the impact of drones on delivery and emissions associated with them are just beginning to be evaluated. So, there was not that much literature out there that informs what the outcome might be. But there is a whole set of research and a lot of different topics that do contribute to what our expectations might be. We know that the energy and emissions efficiency for delivery depends on hub locations and vehicle type. If you have consolidation points or a number of different hubs you are using that is going to change things versus one centralized location. The vehicle type certainly matters; the size of the vehicle and the engine technology. All those things have key influence on the energy and emissions efficiency for deliveries. Another thing we know is that consolidating delivery tends to yield energy savings and emissions benefits and that one-off deliveries have the highest amount of travel. If you're going from point A to point B with one thing, that is pretty inefficient. If you have a lot of goods and you're making a lot of stops along your journey, things become more efficient per customer. We also know when we think about drones, what are the emissions associated with drones? We know that flight is more energy intensive than ground travel. Back before even civil engineering, this is just basic science. Pulling something off of the ground and fighting gravity takes energy. However, in this case drones are also much smaller than traditional ground vehicles. So we are looking at a situation where, we have got some thing that is only 10-20 pounds compared to something that is a ton. That is a huge difference in what needs to be moved. Lastly, drones have the ability to travel as the crow flies, whereas ground vehicles have to use the ground networks which are often less direct. So, all of these things add up in different directions and provide some guidance for us in terms of what we might expect, but certainly do not give us the answer themselves. So, to get at this question will looked at evaluating the delivery of small items using 3 different transport systems and we focused our routing vehicles between homes and stores or homes and the drone depot. The overall method we use was to identify residential locations, identify a central drone depot, identify retail locations, and then route the drones and the vehicles from their particular origins and destinations and determine the emissions associated with each of those trips.
I am going to walk you through one of the case studies that we did; we did a couple of them. The results and structure were similar across them, so this is pretty representative, but this is just one of the cases. This is a spatial representation of the analysis structure. You will see there is a drone depot centrally located in the center of the service area. Residential locations provided the customer locations and those were all residential locations within 10 kilometers of the drone depot and then we took a sample of them. We initially considered using all of the residential locations, but it's simply the computation time was going to be too long. There were plenty of residential locations, so we were able to sample them and still have a more than adequate sample size. Then we identified commercial locations to reflect the driving destinations. And this is a real world case, so the commercial locations are central business district areas within the community that have clusters of the types of things that the drones would otherwise deliver. Things like take out restaurants or any sort of restaurant you can get food from, whether that is fast food or fast casual, pizza, anything that you could get takeout from. And then we also wanted the location to have pharmacies or convenience stores that would have the sorts of things like kind of urgently needed medical supplies or small grocery items; the sort of thing you think I might need to run out for a gallon of milk, although milk is heavy and I do not think we considered gallons of milk. But you know, the one-off trips you might be inclined to make it. We identified 3 locations that have this sort of commercial characteristic and are appropriate locations for the customers to drive to in order to obtain their goods.
The first scenario is our business as usual case. This is a situation where someone would drive to the store. They would route from their home to the commercial locations and back again, so it's a round trip which is the type of trip we are considering. Certainly, there are situations where you are at work and you realize you need dinner and you stop somewhere on your way home, but this is really meant to reflect where you are already at the location you would want the goods. We use the real road network, including information about the road classification hierarchy and the posted speeds. We attached to the road network the emissions associated with every link in the network. The emissions came from the EPA MOVES model and was sensitive to things like road classification and speed.
The second case is when you have an on-demand driving delivery service, so this is your Uber Eats, Door Dash type of system. In the situation there are 2 legs of travel, but they are not symmetrical. And so travel begins at the starting point, and there's quite a bit of uncertainty about that starting point. The vehicle starts wherever it gets its request, travels to the store to pick up whatever the customer purchased, and then brings the goods to the customer. That was the leg of travel that the on-demand delivery service we are attaching to that particular customer and so the vehicle does not have to travel anywhere after it gets to the customer. It begins the next trip for the next customer at that point in this structure.
So, intuitively we know that the fewest emissions are associated when the delivery drivers that are already at the store. If for whatever reason their last delivery was right there, the vehicle is already there. When they go to bring things to the customer all they have to do is get the stuff from the store and drive directly to the customer's location. In the other end the most emissions, our upper bound, is a situation where the delivery driver is starting at a distant periphery. So, before they can even begin their productive part of the trip, they have what we have in freight transportation called an empty truck; the equivalent of an empty truck trip in our historical truck travel freight network. So, how much of this is an empty unproductive trip, and how much of this is actually moving the goods to the consumer? We know there is the productive part and there is uncertainty about that unproductive part where it's traveling from wherever it is starting to the store location.
And then our 3rd case, we are looking at drone deliveries. The drone delivery is routed directly between the homes and their drone depot in the center of the service area. The drone will fly out, it's a round trip and one trip per customer.
So, these are the results associated with each of those 3 cases. You can see right away that the drones are incredibly efficient when it comes to CO2 emissions as compared to either of the 2 driving scenarios. You can also see that there is a pretty wide central band for both of our driving scenarios and that central band is quite a bit wider for the on-demand delivery, again because of that uncertainty in the first half of the trip. What's shown in this graph is the middle case where someone is driving from their home to the store and then back. This is the most potential emissions if you look at the highest possible situation where you have someone doing an entire round trip from some distant location to the store and back again. It is potentially the worst case scenario just because on average they are worse than even the average condition that's on-demand delivery driver travels. But most of the time round trip is going to average out to be a little bit less than the on-demand delivery driver when you consider the extra travel the on-demand delivery driver needs to include. If we look at the quantitative results, we see that drone delivery generates far fewer grams of CO2 emissions. Even though the drone is traveling on average 7 miles round trip and either of the 2 driving scenarios are quite a bit shorter, we do see that either of the driving scenarios is generating more than 20 times more CO2 emissions than what we see from the drone delivery. So, the distance is not any shorter with the drone delivery even though it has a direct trip because it has to go to the center of the service area, there is only one drone depot. Whereas either of the 2 driving scenarios they have the benefit of going to a closer destination. One of the things I have mentioned already is the idea of this uncertain additional amount that the on-demand delivery driving relies on to complete its trip. So, in this graph we see there is a blue part of the on-demand delivery driver and that is the CO2 emissions associated with just the average store-to-customer drive; that is the productive part of their trip. It could be that their CO2 emissions are as small as just that little band. That would be great. That is a pretty good system with all things being equal. Obviously not better than the drones, but a pretty good system. But that is a perfectly efficient system where every on-demand delivery trip begins at the last one's ending point. If there is a lot of on-demand delivery demand you can end up approaching this, but that is certainly not going to be the case all of the time. And in the worst case where the on-demand delivery driver is far from its needed store, that additional orange could be quite substantial. So, you do see that whole orange is the amount required just to get to the store.
So, to wrap it up, a couple of things that I think are important takeaways from this work. Obviously, it starts the conversation in terms of what we see in terms of transportation impacts of using drones for delivery. The design and size of the delivery drones compared to the size of a typical vehicle; we see that they tend to give meaningful savings in CO2 emissions. Delivery drones are efficient. That straight line route helps, but it's the energy efficiency that drives the results. And that energy efficiency, a big part of that is the size of the extra weight beyond what the goods are that are being moved. Twenty pounds versus 2000 pounds is a really big difference. The number of retail destinations in drone depots will certainly affect the results. In this case we have one central drone depot and 3 different retail destinations. The drones will be more efficient if they are located at the retail destination or closer to the customers. But that is not necessarily necessary here. And if you consider a larger number of retail destinations the relative benefit of the drones will go down. Then the last point I think is worth mentioning is that the starting location of the driver for on-demand driving delivery services significantly impacts the total emissions for that system. So, the more demand that those systems have, the more efficient that they have the potential to be. But that extra travel does add pretty significant impacts to their overall benefits.
Thank you so much. It has been great to be here. I think at this point I am supposed to turn it back to Jennifer.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Erica, and thank you to those of you who have typed in questions. We will get to those after all of the presentations, but feel free to continue to type in questions for Erica Our next presentation will be given by Rachel Carlstrom of the Federal Aviation Administration. Rachel holds a degree in aeronautical science and aviation management and is an Airline Transport Pilot with multi-engine rating. Rachel has experience as a corporate and 135 on-demand charter pilot and instructor. Rachel started working for the FAA in 2011 as an Aviation Safety Inspector at the Des Moines, IA Flight Standards District Office. She started working with a primary focus on all UAS and new entrant activities for the Air Carrier Transportation Division and as the IPP team lead for Part 135 Air Carrier Certifications in January of 2018 and has held that position since that time. In February 2019 she began the role as the Senior Leadership Team Program Manager for the IPP North Carolina and Memphis portfolios.
Rachel Carlstrom
Thank you. One of the things I want to share with the group today is to talk a little bit about a program that we have at the FAA called the Integration Pilot Program. This is a program that was started because of a presidential memorandum and it started 2 years ago. We are just starting into the 3rd and final year of it, and this program will complete in October 2020. The President informed us that we needed to find ways to integrate the UAS into the national airspace. Some of the goals for the integration were that we were going to work with state, local, and tribal governments and so we had a solicitation out to many different people that submit applications back into us to be a part of this program. And from that list we evaluated what people would be able to contribute to the things we needed to discover and learn to help us inform guidelines and rules and be able to test different UAS concepts and learn from what they were doing. And we made a selection out of the group that we have been working with for the last 2 years.
Some of the initiatives we are working in with that group is on integration and also consideration of society and community impacts. And we are using all the information as we wrap it up to try to make our regulations, guidance, and the things that we use to process our applicants and integration for UAS to come into our airspace. Some of the things we are highlighting through this program is having UAS outside of the 107 area – which is a small area of operation and does not really allow very much commercial type operation – into more of a commercial type operation where people can take their UAS and profit and make money and make viable businesses that way. Some of the things we found that they need for companies to be able to do these things are to be able fly their UAS at night; what we call BVLOS(Beyond Visual Line of Site) Operations; they have to be able to operate over people; we have had people propose different delivery type things, such as package delivery; and we have people who want to have one pilot control multiple UAS, as well as issues with controlling airspace and ensuring that when we have an unmanned vehicle in the airspace they are able to detect and avoid in the same way that a pilot would be in the airspace, able to see and avoid other aircrafts. This is a diagram showing who the lead participants that have partnered with us. You can see we had people from Alaska, East Coast, West Coast, and all across the United States that we are working with for this.
So, these are just a few of the major accomplishments we have already seen in the IPP that I wanted to share with this group. Google, who has a subsidy called Wing, they are part of our Virginia lead participant. They obtained what is our first air carrier certificate for drone delivery in the U.S. So, what this means is they are able to actually take, for compensation and hire, the property of another and deliver it with UAS as a business model. We have several other companies working on that right now as well and so I will speak a little bit more about that as we move forward. Another big accomplishment came out of the North Carolina D.O.T. Two of their partners, Matternet and UPS, are working on delivery of medical packages on a campus called Wake Med over in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is being done under Part 107 right now, which means they're just having a short distance and they are able to do this while keeping everything within their line of sight. But they're working towards a 135 air carrier certification, which will allow them to expand those operations. With the city of Reno, we have issued different waivers that are applicable to their Part 107 operations. They are able to do one pilot and multiple aircrafts, they're able to operate at night, they can go beyond visual line of sight, and with Vos (visual observers) that are going to be ensuring that even though the pilot who is controlling the UAS does not have line of sight there is communication with someone who does. That allows them to stretch out their operations further. And they are going to work toward being able to do AED deliveries and have some of their delivery options in mind for their CONOPs as well. The North Dakota D.O.T., partnered with State Farm, has a nationwide waiver. They can do drone operations over people and beyond the visual line of sight with use of a visual observer. One of our partners, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, they are a tribal nation and they are operating under public aircraft, so that was a first for UAS to be approved for a tribal nation to operate. We are also partnered with the city of San Diego and the Chula Vista Police Department. They are using UAS for emergency response and they are doing that under the public aircraft rules as well. The North Carolina Department of Transportation uses their UAS both last year during the hurricane and just now with the most recent hurricane to assess property within North Carolina. Specifically, this time over by the Outer Banks, which is been really helpful for them to know what roads are flooded and where they can get vehicles in and out of, and just being able to surveil the area and see where people are that may need help. With our North Dakota Department of Transportation, they are also doing the flights to support flooding efforts that they had in their area under 107 rules. And out in Alaska they are doing pipeline patrols and surveillance under 107 rules as well. Another thing that we have going on with our North Carolina D.O.T. is a package delivery route. This is also under part 107, but they're going to be working to expand this for larger distances and to get their 135 certification. Right now you can see in this picture they have a small quad copter that they attach a package to and it actually leaves from a strip mall area where there are several different vendors of food and flies across a road over into sort of a park area where there are soccer fields and tennis courts and where there are a lot of people in the area. And they can order their food, and have it brought over to them in just a few minutes via a drone.
So, some of the benefits and impacts we are seeing through delivery of the drones and by using drones to be able to surveil areas. We are seeing lives being saved. And one of the things we're seeing with the deliveries for lifesaving deliveries is our medical deliveries and blood deliveries. There are efficiencies being claimed a lot faster, things are able to be delivered. It is more convenient for people and there is cost savings as well as other benefits that we are finding. One of the flights that we are doing that is saving lives right now is the medical delivery flight. You can see there are 2 different types of drones, of UAS, in this presentation. The quad copter, the one on the bottom that has the UPS emblem on it is the one that is being used over at our Wake Med facility to transport medical supplies from one side of the campus to the other side. The one off to the right of the slide is a UAS from a company called Zipline. This one is already doing a lot of missions overseas, specifically in Rwanda. They are able to take blood to places where it is not as fast or efficient to drive to and they are able to make sure the different outreach hospitals and communities have blood supply. Another thing that is helping is not having blood expiring. Because if we have an area where they have blood and they are not able to use it, they can transport it to another area and be able to use it that way. Another example with this particular company that is going to help us and that we are working with to bring over here to the United States is that they can go out to areas on-site for medical emergencies. So, an example of that might be that if we had a car accident on the side of a road, and especially if it is in an area where there is a lot of traffic, the EMTs may not have the supplies they need to treat the person. And if the person is unable to be quickly transported out of there or potentially stuck in a vehicle, through the use of drones we can fly needed supplies out to that site, such as blood or other medical supplies, and actually conduct some blood transfusions or medical services right there on the spot because we would be able to get the supplies we need to do that. A couple of the other life-saving things we have seen out of the use of UAS is that we are able to assess threats. So, related to knowing if there are bridges that are getting weak that might cause accidents, or if we have had hurricane damage and roads might be flooded, finding those areas so we don't have people out there trying to surveil that in vehicles where they might put themselves in danger doing so. This has been a great us of UAS. And also, being able to take vehicles off the road. So, we are using the UAS and replacing having to have these vehicles on the road to make these same deliveries. Specifically, with the Zipline UAS in Rwanda, they are exclusively doing blood deliveries by UAS now; they are no longer doing that with their cars at all.
So, other efficiencies. In this picture here you can see one of the recent pictures from the North Carolina Department of Transportation when they had their hurricane flooding. They were able to send their drones out and locate people to see where people were that needed some assistance or help. And they were also able to survey the damage so they would know what areas were safe to send people out to and they were able to do this at a much faster speed than they would have been able to do in the past.
I am going to show you a short video here to give you an example of what some of these processes look like and how some of this is working. <Video>
Thanks, Jennifer. So, although that is a little bit of a commercial, I think it's a great, short clip to show you how they are operating out there at Wake Med. That is an operation that is happening daily. They have done over 1000 flights out there. They have been operating since the spring.
So, what are we learning from all of the things we are practicing and testing in our IPP program? We are learning how to inform our new regulations and what types of guidance and decision-making need to go into those. One thing that we are working toward is developing performance-based rules. So, right now we have a lot of rules that are very prescriptive that tell you exactly how you need to do something and what we have found, especially in the world of UAS, is that we need to be able to say what the outcome is for things and not tell people how to get to the outcome. Especially with the newest technologies and how things are evolving every day in this arena, that is very important, or we would be constantly having to update and change our rules. So, that is one thing we are working towards doing is getting with in the prescriptive rules in getting into more performance-based rules.
So, tools that are helping us to work with the rules we have right now are waivers, authorizations, and exemptions. And there are a couple links provided for you on this slide that show you some places you can go to see some of these waivers that have already been approved so you can get an idea of what things people are doing out there. So, the 107 waivers have a sight to go to. And then related to the 135 exemption requests, the applicants that we have for air carrier operations are Wing, Uber, Amazon, and UPS. And of those 4, Wing has not only their request for exemption, but also the adjudicated request by the FAA. So, it is interesting if you are thinking of any type of air carrier operations with UAS to see based on what their request was, what the FAA's response was to that and what they were granted and what they were denied.
So, Part 107 rules, if you're not very familiar with it, they are only applying to UAS that are less than 55lbs. You cannot go outside of state boundaries when you are doing transportation for compensation or hire. And all of your operations that are for compensation or hire need to be visual line of sight. And then there are some additional criteria involved in that as well as certifications and visibility and speed maximums. For the 135, this gives people the ability to go a little further with what they want to do. This is an actual air carrier operator certification. Similar to how we would regulate or certificate a manned operation. Transportation for compensation or hire is allowed under this part. They are allowed to do deliveries beyond visual line of sight. They are required to have a type certification for their you UAS, so they have to have an airworthiness standard that shows the aircraft is reliable. There is airman certification, airspace considerations, we have to do risk assessments, and also economic authority required by the D.O.T. to operate air carrier in the United States, which is the same rules under part 135.
If you do have an interest in going for a 135 air carrier type certification there are lots of different lines of efforts that you will be working with. We know you won't be able to get a 135 certificate without petitioning for exemption, because some of the things we require for manned aviation are not applicable to UAS. Some very simple examples of that are that you might have to wear a seatbelt and an aircraft where that simply does not make sense for a UAS where there is no one in the aircraft. Then the air carrier certification requirements, airman requirements, airworthiness which ties into the type certification, risk assessments, economic authority, and airspace request. So, we will take questions at the end. Thank you.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. Thank you, Rachel. Our final presentation will be given by Daniel Friedenzohn, Associate Professor of Aeronautical Science and Associate Dean in the College of Aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. He obtained his law and master's degree in Economics from Syracuse University and practiced law representing clients on various aviation, criminal, and land use matters. Mr. Friedenzohn teaches aviation law and conducts research on various legal issues pertaining to the airline industry as well as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). He speaks at conferences about emerging issues in the aviation industry and is the chair of the Transportation Research Board's Subcommittee on UAS. Mr. Friedenzohn has written about various aviation matters for Air Transport World, the Florida International University Law Review, and Issues in Aviation Law and Policy.
Daniel Friedenzohn
Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for the invitation to speak today. My research looks at building on what Erica and Rachel talked about and it focuses more on the state and local government side. And I think there is a role for state and local governments to play, but sometimes that area has some legal complexity and it often results in some tension. I think Rachel highlighted the important work that the FAA is doing. I think we're getting to a world where if you need some milk or butter for your recipe you can order it through your phone app and have it delivered to your home via drone. And I think that will happen at some point, but nonetheless, there are still some issues to resolve over the years to come and I am quite confident that will happen.
Generally, the FAA has had broad authority to regulate aviation safety; it does it very well. And to deal with issues pertaining to airspace. It is in context of airspace and just volume of UAS that will probably be used for freight or other reasons that people are concerned because some areas are already quite congested, depending on the altitude and things of that nature. And yet we know we live in a world where you can't get things soon enough. So, Amazon has today about 5% of the retail market of the United States and in terms of US retail it has about 50% of the market. There are about 100 million Amazon Prime subscribers that get their packages delivered in 2 days and many cases less. That will continue to grow. Especially the way the model has been created. So, Amazon represents just one of large players. There are smaller businesses that may be interested in drone delivery that will continue to explore and have already invested quite a bit in this technology. In Rachel's presentation she mentioned the work that UPS is doing using the Matternet quad copters. That is just one of the examples why drone delivery can be so valuable I think from a societal perspective. It may help to reduce some automobile traffic congestion. It can certainly be efficient in loweringcosts in some cases. And may even provide improved quality of life or improved quality of access to certain goods for people who have limited public transportation needs or who have a disability that limits their access to goods or services. There is a lot of interest in this technology and there is a lot of reasons to be very optimistic about it.
About 3 years ago, the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Postal Service did a survey on public perception of having drones deliver products. It's pretty clear that most Americans expect this technology will be kind of part of our society in the next 5-10 years. It is clear the public is intrigued about this possibility. We live in a world where we can get our products faster and sooner than we used to. So, that is very appealing. The public also has some concerns about intentional misuse of drones, especially with respect to privacy issues and things like that, and just safety in general. It has driven people to express concerns to their state or in some cases even their city officials or the homeowners' association about what that technology may look like and things that they need to do to regulate it.
So, Uber Elevate filed a petition for exemption for regulatory relief of 16 rules to provide food delivery. Carryout and food delivery is a part of how many of us consume a meal at some point and obviously this technology has a lot of benefits. The comments that were submitted in a transparent fashion (you can access those comments on regulations.gov) really focused on the key areas on the slide. Safety, privacy issues; we live in a society where we expect areas around our home and certainly inside her home, we have the right to privacy in those areas. There are also issues there are outside the realm of privacy. Issues pertaining to noise. What am I going to see when I go out the door? Am I going to be looking at things buzzing back and forth and how is that going to affect my quality of life? And by the way, if one of those devices or more falls on me is that considered a trespass? If it hits me or damages my property are there some port issues? So, the concerns that are being raised I think are good for us to start figuring out. How we are going to deal with the requirements and what role do local governments have to play with respect to the regulation and things of that nature.
States and local governments have what is generally called 10th amendment police powers; the ability to regulate things like public safety, aesthetics of a community, protecting the general public, welfare issues, things of that nature. So, when we talk about areas like zoning, it is appropriate for a local community to decide where they want to have an airport located. Or if they are going to have a drone port for departures and arrivals, where might that be? And generally, in the legal scheme that we operate under today, those legal responsibilities fall with local governments to do. And so, they can be controversial, but basically the role of that local government is to create a zoning scheme that makes sense. That you have residential next to a use that is compatible, not next to heavy manufacturing or things like that. Or not next to an airport that might cause disruption when you're sleeping and might require noise mitigation and things like that. It is also very normal for local governments to regulate things like trespass. Many of us do not think twice if we step on our neighbor's lawn, but in some cases the way we view trespass may result in some people saying "I do not want a UAS or a drone flying over my property. I consider that my property and we do not want them doing that." In today's world nobody thinks twice about whether a 747 or a Cessna 172 flies over our house; nobody is going to allege a trespass or anything like that. But it is possible, given that these devices fly at lower altitudes, there may be different changes in the legal scheme with respect to that. Or at least how we view this issue. The other area I mentioned earlier is about privacy, and generally that is an area that has resided with the states and less with the federal government.
So, this slide talks about the areas and the responsibility of regulation that in some cases might impose a burden or in some cases might provide some additional protection for drone operators. In the world we live in today we would definitely have the federal government involved in regulating. Rachel's presentation was the perfect example of creating the rules for that, the regulatory process. Sometimes Congress has chimed in. And then to some extent the states may have a role with respect to that. I would say most states are kind of represented to some extent like our country as a whole. When you go to parts of certain states with an urban environment, their concerns and needs may be a little bit different than an area that is more rural and has farming and may want to take advantage of drones for agricultural purposes. In some cases, it may make sense for a state to say we are going to allow local governments to regulate some of this activity, because they know what the best needs of their communities are. The problem is that an operator may have difficulty what the rules are for each community they operate in. In the world we live in today with aviation, we have one regulatory body that sets forth the rules for usage of airspace. And so, whether you are flying in Florida or whether you're flying in Georgia you do not have to worry about it, because the rules are same, at least in terms of operations and in terms of the use of the airspace.
The FAA has certainly been proactive over the last few years. We have the part 107 rules that govern commercial operations. I would say over the 7 or 8 years ago, we had a period where there was a lack of clarity to some extent, a lack of a fully developed regulatory scheme, which resulted in some state and local governments taking action with respect to UAS operations. Some of it was very narrow in scope, such as regulating UAS activity over public property such as a park. Some of it was a little broader. Some of those ordinances or state laws pertained to criminal activity, assault, and things of that nature. Some dealt more with tort law.
So, this is just one sample ordinance that was enacted in New Jersey. The ordinance states in partthat "small unmanned aircraft shall not operate in any airspace below 400 feet", but when you look at the end that has a provision that says, "This chapter shall not prohibit the authorized and lawful operation and use of small UAS for commercial, business, educational. . .and in accordance with applicable regulations." I think to some extent, some governments have become better educated with respect to what they can operate in understanding the important role that the federal government has with that, and try to find areas where it may be compatible where if they do want to regulate something that is certainly within the 10th amendment rights to do so and it is not a violation of federal law.
Some states have become very concerned about what their county and local governments may do. And so, they said we are just going to preempt them, we are going to enact a law that preempts them from taking action with respect to UAS activities. So, they see the state has basically protected and provided some clarity if you are operating in one of those states, so you just have to worry about state law. Some have raised concerns that one solution in a state may not meet the needs of everybody in the state.
Homeowners associations are also getting involved in some of this activity. Some have certainly expressed concerns about it. Homeowners associations have, by usually state law, they are empowered to adopt rules in relationship to the interest of their homeowners. Think about them kind of like a city, but in a smaller scale. By state law they generally have those broad authorities. Some people in their communities have concerns about the color of the type of paint that people use for the outside of their home, they have some of the same concerns with respect to UAS operations. On the other hand, just like any community, you may have residents who feel that UAS can maybe play a role in perhaps providing oversight over the community, perhaps some safety monitoring, things of that nature. And then some communities have expressed an interest and some of the literature has said we are going to designate certain areas where people can have their packages delivered and where the UAS can operate to and from. That, by the way, is somewhat inconsistent with what companies like Amazon would like to see which is basically home delivery just as we have today, just instead of through FedEx or UPS it would be a drone; you put a mat outside your home or in your backyard and that pound of butter you needed can be delivered to your home for use. So that is to come. I will say that basically 1 in every 5 American lives in one of the country's, we have about 340,000 homeowners' associations, so I suspect that there will be some activity in this area
There was a study in 2017 by S.M. Shavarani and colleagues that looked at a number of drone delivery areas that would be required. And just in the city of San Francisco their forecast showed that there would be aboutwould be about 104,000 deliveries per day in San Francisco alone. It is quite a lot and it brings up a lot of questions. The Green point that you see there are just the charging stations. But, of course, when you think about that volume of delivery, it does raise questions about what local governments may do. And certainly local governments are concerned about the amount of activity in trying to find a way they can bring order to that. Again, it is not for the local government to deal with the airspace issues, but certainly they may want to play a role in determining whether they want to have that activity limited in terms departures and arrivals to certain areas in their cities. And I bring up San Francisco because the UAS operations would take place, at least in today's scheme, at 400 feet or below. But a significant portion of that city is under San Francisco Tower operations. It's busy airspace, you're near the San Francisco International Airport and then the Oakland International Airport as well. Other cities have different concerns with respect to that. I work in the Daytona area, or close to it, and cities have their concerns about what the needs of their community are. You have a zoning scheme to the right on the slide and you want to make sure that everything in terms of the usage is compatible. I think we see UAS delivery is a real game changer in terms of society, how we live. But again, cities and states are going to have to figure out what role they should play in terms of regulating it. Not necessarily dealing with the air safety issues in terms of airspace usage, but other things that affect the quality of the community, and certainly they will play a role with that. And the solutions may be different depending on the community. Every community has their own needs and you want to balance the needs of the community with industry, with the rights of the residents, and make sure you strike the right balance.
I think Rachel's presentation pointed this out as well. There is still work being done with respect to the FAA. There is a lot of promise with respect to that, especially the IPP program. I think state and local governments will play a meaningful role in supporting these efforts. Not in taking action that is inconsistent with what the federal role is. I think the public needs to and will learn a lot about this technology and its benefits and some of those concerns about privacy and about drones falling out of the sky. It certainly will be mitigated if the right integration system is done properly the next few years. Obviously, I think there will continue to be discussions about local governments, and it will be interesting to see what happens with that. We still live in a world where local government sometimes go beyond the scope of their authority and some of those things get resolved by the courts. And there is probably the potential for some of that to continue down the road as well. But like with everything in aviation I'm sure we'll figure out the perfect solution at some point and I look forward to seeing how this develops. Thanks again for having me.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Daniel. We do have a number of questions typed in. Please feel free to continue typing your questions in. Daniel, I'm going to start off with questions for you although I think some of these could possibly be answered by other presenters. Daniel, I will ask them to you first, and if any other presenters want to jump in feel free. There were some questions about how the drones operate and weather. Do they only operate in good weather? Do they tend to perform differently under various weather conditions? What if the weather turns bad during delivery?
Daniel Friedenzohn
I think probably Rachel and Erica can do a better job of answering that, but I would say there are operating limits for UAS. There is a variety of factors that come into play with respect to that and each one is probably a little bit different. Rachel may have some other ideas on that as well.
Erica Wygonik
This is Erica. I will chime in a little bit. I think those are really good questions. Certainly, the calculations we did, you know it has to do with how far the drone can go. And if there is a strong head wind or a strong side wind, that is going to affect how much energy it takes to fly and how far they can go. Most drone operators are working with a considerable amount of reserve in their battery. They do not fly the furthest distance that their battery nominally would tell them they could fly. That the testing would suggest that they keep a pretty considerable amount of reserve, so I think it would generally be okay. Obviously, if there is particularly strong winds or electric storms I think there would be real risk there. I do not know if that is covered at all in policy. I presume they just would not fly if the weather was that bad, but I do not know if there would be an intention to restrict drones flying in certain conditions.
Rachel Carlstrom
You are absolutely right, it's very specific to each UAS. There are a lot of differences just like there are with aircrafts on what different UAS can handle as far as weather. We have wind restrictions on some and we have some that can fly in things like rain and there are some that can't. It just really depends on the aircraft and how it was certified and what the capabilities are of it. Some environmental factors can be avoided and some are able to be flown through.
Jennifer Symoun
All right, thank you. Another question. Have we yet approached any issues of taking claims in reference to visual or noise pollution? Additionally, how are drones using navigable airspace fitting into the public good argument?
Daniel Friedenzohn
Erica or Rachel, do you want to chime in 1st? Or I am happy to add a few comments. I am not aware of any legal claims. There has been some litigation that I am aware of; people shooting down drones. There was a case that was brought in Massachusetts with respect to the Newton case with respect to flying and transporting, I believe it was medical-related drugs and the ability of the city to regulate UAS activity and things of that nature. I believe that will continue, but I am not aware of other types of claims. But I think with just like anything, as this becomes more and more a part of our aviation system, if you will, there will be some claims. I think even in today's world you have cases about cities trying to regulate activities and somebody brings a challenge about whether they have the legal authority to do so or are they preempted by federal law or in violation of the commerce clause by doing so. I don't think we have seen the end of that, and I think there is a potential for a UAS case to be brought on 4th amendment privacy grounds given the law enforcement is using more and more UAS for different reasons. What was the 2nd question? I apologize.
Jennifer Symoun
How are drones using navigable airspace fitting into the public good argument?
Rachel Carlstrom
This is Rachel. I can jump in on that. So, one of the reasons that we have the Integration Pilot Program and that we are working toward integration of the nest is because with the regulations out there, people are just doing whatever they want. So, it is really in the public interest to ensure the operations that are being conducted are being conducted safely. And that is why we are learning about what it takes to make sure those are done safely so that we can inform those rules and regulations that need to come up and be published and help to get the UAS community all working in a way that they're not going to because hazards or are dangers and that they are all going to be operating safely.
Jennifer Symoun
All right, thank you. Another question. How do drones not crash into each other or birds?
Rachel Carlstrom
A lot of the flights that are being done are being done within visual line of sight. And so, that is very similar to what a recreational type pilot's flying would be, or someone who flies in visual flight rules. It's actually controllers of the UAS that are creating the separation, just visually by watching the UAS and seeing where it goes. But as we evolve, we have visual observers that are in contact with the actual pilot that can help with that, and then we are also seeing different technologies develop that will be able to help with that.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. On this morning's newscast a person was saved from a shark because a drone speaker warned the swimmer and scared off the shark. How unusual is it for a drone to have a speak or function?
Rachel Carlstrom
This is Rachel again. I do not think that I have any real data to share about that, but there is all kinds of different UAS out there. A lot of them have cameras on them. They have the ability to have speakers or different things on them. So, I would not have an idea how many would have that, but different drones can be equipped with lots of different things.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright, thank you. Next question. Thinking of privacy, security, and safety in an urban context can you discuss designated corridors of travel above arterial roads rather than point-to-point travel?
Erica Wygonik
I think that is an interesting question and that pairs on a question that was asked earlier in the chat, comparing the idea of direct travel, point-to-point distance, and the efficiency of that. Some people would prefer drones to travel over the roadway corridor because you are not having the same noise or privacy violations that people might have if a drone was flying over their home. But then you add in these extra layers of concern when you are traveling above a road, and there are some places that have restricted that you are not allowed to travel along the corridor road. I think it's a really interesting, tricky balance there. I would be curious to know what Rachel and Daniel have to say about that.
Daniel Friedenzohn
The one thing I would add is that there is a good amount of research going on right now with respect to drone noise. I think this discussion will continue for a while. over time, improvements in technology have resulted in quieter engines and things like that. The same thing will happen with development of UAS technology. But just given the volume of activity that is forecasted to be operating in the skies, those are valid legitimate issues and I'll be interested to see how it pans out.
Rachel Carlstrom
One thing that I would add to that is one of the mitigation strategies to reduce risk is sometimes strategic planning. So, a lot of the UAS are not going straight-line distances because they can travel over maybe a ditch or a more wooded area rather than a populated area, and that way they can reduce risk to the population on the ground. Especially when we are traveling over roads. There is a lot of concern with being over moving vehicles with people in them. So, we have not been gravitating toward using the roads as a way to travel. We have been gravitating more to staying away from the roads and only crossing them for a short period when necessary and then having most of the routes that the UAS are flying be in a more rural typesetting if that is possible on the geographical area.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright, thank you. Next question. What is the limit to airspace rights? Does it differ from city to city or state to state?
Daniel Friedenzohn
That is where it gets a little interesting. There is a famous case from 1946, the Causby Case. Which, if you look at a lot of the legal literature dealing with UAS, they often refer to that case even though it didn't deal with a drone. It talks about what rights does a land owner have with respect to their private property. And they refer to the ancient common law rights basically from the soil to the heaven. I think this has changed over the years. If it hadn't everybody would be issuing trespass complaints aboutan A320 that is flying overhead on its way toReagan National or Orlando or whatever, people would be claiming their rights are being violated. I society, at least here, has evolved. But it's going to be interesting because the volume of traffic operating at lower altitudes may change and may force a court to have to answer that question, unless Congress takes action in that arena or something like that or the FAA develops new regulations. We will just have to see.
Jennifer Symoun
I think this question relates to that. Why is drone risk above roads more concerning than above people not in a protective vehicle? What is the logic behind this?
Erica Wygonik
My guess is it is just quantity. You have more people in a smaller space above a road than you do each in their own home. That would be my guess. I do not know.
Rachel Carlstrom
A couple of factors that we take into consideration for that is if there was a driver that got into an accident that could lead to multiple accidents. Whereas somebody in an open area if a drone would come down one person potentially would be affected or just the person that was directly under the drone. But in a highway type situation, especially if people are traveling at high speeds, we see that could potentially be a hazard for multiple vehicles if one vehicle was distracted or somehow interfered by the use of a drone.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. Has anyone explored using drones for crime prevention? For example, Eyes in the Sky.
Daniel Friedenzohn
Law enforcement in different communities have taken different strategies depending on funding. Many communities have law enforcement agencies using it for SWAT, using it for emergency type situations. I think one of the things that given the privacy concerns that have been kind of raised along the way as technology has become more prevalent in our society is just the privacy rights; we do not want Big Brother watching us all of the time. I think some law enforcement agencies have been very cautious in terms of how they adopt technology. A few years ago, myself and a colleague wrote an article and we looked at what the Police Department in Arlington Texas did when they acquired their UAS. They held several townhall meetings to explain how the technology would be used, for what purposes, and for what purposes it would not be used for. I think that was to address the concerns of the community especially with respect with privacy and to help the residents kind of understand what the rules of the road were for UAS operations with respect to that. Obviously it has tremendous capabilities and it can actually help be a safer way for law enforcement in many types of situations. It does have a lot of value.
Rachel Carlstrom
To add to that, we have seen with our IPP partners some great benefits in that area. The dispatchers are able to send the UAS out prior to the police officers or law enforcement even being able to get on site, so they can immediately have a direct feedback to the operator and the operator can be telling the people who are responding the emergency what the situation is, giving details about the location, and if they have a person who is leaving the scene they can follow that person. They found a lot of great benefits. Related to the community outreach I think that is very important. In our testing that we have done so far with our partners, we have found the community to be very receptive to public use of it in this type of way, where we are supporting the community in reducing crime and helping to put the police and fire and our protective people in a better situation in their responses.
Jennifer Symoun
Erica, we'll move on to some questions for you. You present interesting findings, is there a way we can cite the numbers presented in your presentation?
Erica Wygonik
I do not see why not. Yes, that's fine.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. I do have all of the presenters' email addresses up on the screen, not that we want to bombard you with a ton of emails, but if anybody does want to question Erica further about that her contact information is there. Another question for you. Did you consider how the requested product gets to the drone depot?
Erica Wygonik
We did. In the cases we were looking at, the drone depots were co-located with the goods that they would be moving. And so, there is obviously the need for some sort of vehicle to stock that location, but it wasn't a situation where the pizza gets made at a restaurant and brought to the depot, put on the drone and flown away. Everything that was moved in the drone was either on site or the goods that could be delivered were stored on site. There is certainly some difference in stocking the drone depot versus stocking the various consumer locations. But I think that ends up being a pretty minor amount of difference. It is not something we considered specifically in this project.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright. Another question for you. Doesn't this assume the drone battery charge generates no emissions? That would seem to be a flaw in the synopsis.
Erica Wygonik
There was a question right after that in terms of how the drone emissions were calculated, so they probably go together here. We did not assume no emissions for the drones. We did do a pretty careful calculation to identify what emissions would be appropriate for the drone usage. As you know, it comes from charging the batteries, so that's electricity generation. We considered things like what is the loss in the electricity transmission system, what is the loss in actually charging the battery, and then how far can the drone travel on that given charge to come up with the electrical use per mile, which converts to a CO2 per mile using CO2 generation per unit of electricity. We are able to get that CO2 to electrical use was location specific. The overall structure was the same, but there were some features that were different. The land use density was different, the road use was different, and the efficiency of the electricity generation in a given area varied considerably based on what they were using as their source of electricity. So, we did assume that drones generated emissions. That was tied into the electricity required to charge the battery. And I think also answer the 2nd question in terms of how we came up with those calculations.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright, another question. Why would car routes be shorter than drone flights when drones do not need to use the road network?
Erica Wygonik
This is where we really get into that idea of how many locations people have as a choice to travel to. We did have an assumption in there that people would travel to the closest retail destination. If you're going out for pizza, you're going to go to a close pizza place. Unless some pizza place across town is just amazing, most people are going to the closest pizza place to pick up dinner that night, or if you need Tylenol for your kid you are going to go to the closest place that has Tylenol. So, the driving customers went to the closest retail destination and those were considerably closer. If you think about an area that has a radius of 10 kilometers, drones can be flying 10 kilometers in each direction. The customer though, when you take that area and divided into 3 subareas, they are quite a bit closer to their destination and that is where the efficiency comes from, and thus the importance of how many drone depots and how many retail destinations is pretty big factor here.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright. So, you are assuming that drones travel in a straight line. If that is correct, are there any other concerns about air rights that would force drones to take more circuitous routes?
Erica Wygonik
I think we touched on this a little bit in a prior discussion, but we did assume a straight line. I think it's really interesting to think about what are the things that might restrict that straight-line, and I think that could definitely influence the results. Ranging from having to follow the road network because that's air rights that people are willing to share versus having to avoid particular areas because they are secure. So, I think those will certainly influence the results. I think it is an interesting intersection of policy and efficiency. And I think it is a good conversation moving forward.
Jennifer Symoun
How much weight can a drone carry?
Erica Wygonik
Most drones in this kind of range are carrying not more than about 3-5 pounds of goods. The drones themselves tend to be I think a 10-20 pound range. Some things are obviously less, but that is kind of a top end of what they carry.
Daniel Friedenzohn
I think some like companies are assuming about 5 pounds for their freight.
Rachel Carlstrom
There are lots of different variations as far as how much a UAS can carry. For most of the small UAS, and this is less than 55 lbs, we're seeing weight loads between 5-10 pounds.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. What are the resources required to load or unload a drone?
Erica Wygonik
All of the drones that I've looked into are all in that consumer side and so they are all pretty consumer friendly and automated. And therefore, there aren't really resources required on the users end. There are various mechanisms to deal with this. I do not know what is meant by resources, but the energy use is pretty small for that side of it compared to the actual flying through the air.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright. Can you discuss any impact on the trucks? Can drones do anything to alleviate demand for heavy freight vehicles in urban or suburban areas?
Erica Wygonik
I think that is a pretty interesting question. If we look at the weight that the drones are carrying, the consumer delivery drones, as Daniel cited and a couple other companies, are all in the 3-5 pound range. I think Amazon is quoted as saying that would cover about 85% of what they typically deliver. So, if you think about 85% of Amazon's packages that could come by drone, that is interesting in terms of potentially alleviating congestion. In terms of where that falls out from a CO2 perspective, I am not really sure. The drones are pretty efficient, but if you have a truck making a lot of stops the CO2 associated with each individual stop is actually pretty small. So, we have not looked at that in this work and have not looked at it yet. I cannot comment on how that would weigh out, whether it would be worth the trade-off of getting the goods off of trucks and on to drones. People have started to look into it, but the results have been a little bit mixed.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. We will now move on to questions for Rachel. Can you explain for engagement with cities beyond non IPP, how do you engage with municipal governments responsible for privacy, safety, and security in urban centers?
Rachel Carlstrom
So, one of the reasons we chose to partner with state, local, and tribal governments for the IPP is to kind of learn about what would work for that and to start expanding in those areas where we have our partnerships. What we are doing right now is just working within the IPP and those partnerships. We do have a lot of lessons learned that we're finding out through these partnerships. And we know that when we have new entrants coming into the UAS arena, especially related to air carrier operations, then this will be data we can share with them and help to reach out to new communities. We also have our local Flight Standards District Offices (FSDO) that are located throughout the US, and we have a team out of the FSDOs called the FAA Safety Team. So, our FAA Safety team is doing outreach, but that is primarily outreach to pilots. So, we are working on discovering what to do with those things. We also participate in different events, seminars, and conferences. This gives us an opportunity when we attend these events and speak on these events and are panelists in these events to share information with those different municipalities in a large group format, but we are interested in doing more of that.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright, and another question for you. What are the average flight times of the emergency response drones?
Rachel Carlstrom
This varies widely depending on what the drone is and what the situation is. Of the 2 examples I showed you that do medical deliveries, the UAS over in North Carolina that takes it about 3 minutes to transport the medical samples from one end of the campus to the other end of the campus. Depending on traffic that would take before possibly 30 minutes to an hour. So, it is a huge time savings right there. With the other one I showed you, that was a fixed wing and that was the one we talked about also doing blood deliveries out in Rwanda. That is a faster aircraft, because it is a fixed wing instead of the quad copter style. It actually travels up to 80mph. So those are just a couple examples, but lots of different UAS are being designed that will have lots of different abilities and response times. For the small UAS rules under part 107, to be qualified for that it is 100mph maximum speed. But we have UAS that will exceed that being built right now.
Jennifer Symoun
Alright. And in part 135 what about urban context understanding for urban flight?
Rachel Carlstrom
I am not sure if I can fully understand that question, but I think what it is asking is protecting urban areas or ground risk. Is that what we are getting to with that? I am not sure. I guess our person can't respond. So, I'll answer to that.
Essentially, what we are looking at is a lot of different things for urban flights. One of the main things is aircraft durability and reliability. So, a typical manned aircraft has to go through a process called the Type Certification and that shows the manufacturer that they have met the air worthiness standards, that we have confidence that the aircraft is not going to fall out of the sky, and it is not posing a danger to people or objects on the ground. So, we are doing the same types of things with these UAS. We have realized the traditional manned process we use is overly burdensome for these small UAS, but we do have a new process that we call the Durability and Reliability Means of Compliance. For a UAS to be able to operate as an air carrier they have to go through that program or through our normal type certification program. And then that will ensure us they have a good component of safety and it will have a track record with lots of data showing as they are safe to operate in our area and to produce safety over ground risks. We have different categories as far as that risk. So, some may able to fly over more rural areas versus moving into the urban type environments. We also have strategic and technological mitigations in place to protect those environments as well. And then there's also the software and the programming and the pilots in that are in the loop that have the ability to make emergency decisions for UAS. If there's something going wrong, they can send it to an emergency location to land. Some of our UAS have parachutes or other mitigating type things as well to protect people in urban areas.
Jennifer Symoun
Ok, and Wade typed in a clarification. With 20,000 cities that are all different, less than 400 ft is complex space. How do you certify in a 135 worthiness of safety and security?
Rachel Carlstrom
We are categorizing the different areas as a rural or urban or highly populated. And so, as we get into those different categories, we require a more stringent type certifications or more stringent data and reliability to be comfortable having our UAS over those cities.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. We have 3 questions left and only about a minute left, so let's see if we can quickly get some responses to the remaining questions. So, Rachel, this came in during yours, but I am not sure if others want to respond, too. How or who decides where delivery is placed and how can we be sure it is a safe place?
Rachel Carlstrom
It is a one by one situation. The FAA works with the operator to ensure that their con-ops are safe based on where they want to do their deliveries.
Jennifer Symoun
Erica, did you want to jump in as well?
Erica Wygonik
I think what she said is great. It is up to the provider and they kind of work to find what they think is going to make sense.
Daniel Friedenzohn
I would add for the smaller packages though, I think local governments will have a say. And I think some of it will depend on what the public is saying. If you have ever attended a local townhall meeting, it is a small group of people, but they can be quite persistent in raising their concerns and can make things difficult for the local government. I think it will be interesting because I think the challenges will vary from community to community.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. Next question. Aside from medicine medical supplies, what is one of the most likely goods to be transported by drone? And are any regular trips or deliveries being made today?
Erica Wygonik
And he was sharing some results of their tests in Australia. Their initial plan was pharmaceutical (Tylenol, medicine, etc.) and burritos I think was the main thing. They wound up adding a costly delivery to the options and that became their far and away the most popular order. So, 90 seconds I think he said you could get a latte delivered to your door. Apparently, people who like lattes are happy to have them 90 seconds later.
Jennifer Symoun
We have one last question. Were dynamic models for drones used to calculate how much distance can be traveled with a charge or did you use static numbers to get a normalized results?
Erica Wygonik
In the work we did, we used conservative estimates of how far the drone could go on a charge, so that kind of took the largest CO2 impact they would have. We could be more sensitive and look at some other things that would be more dynamic, but it would only be more optimistic than what we looked at. So, we did use static numbers, but they were statically conservative.
Jennifer Symoun
I think we've gotten through all the questions. Thank you all for attending today's seminar. I will send out a link to the recording of today's webinar within the next day. The October Talking Freight seminar is not yet available for registration but once it is I will send notice through the Freight Planning LISTSERV. The Freight Planning LISTSERV is the primary means of sharing information about upcoming seminars. I also encourage you to join the LISTSERV if you have not already done so.
