Involi look to the future
As 2024 looks to be a pivotal year for drone delivery and for BVLOS autonomous drone flight, here are some news & my outlook for this year.
The ASTM International standard I co-lead with Akaki Kunchulia (Iris Automation Inc before, MatrixSpace now) and previously with Jacob Goldsberry (DroneUp) has been finally PUBLISHED! Please welcome “F3623-23 – Standard Specification for Surveillance Supplementary Data Service Providers” to the galaxy of standards related to #drones & #UAS!
This is of capital importance for INVOLI and our customers, as it specifies how our service should be provided. There are 3 pillars:
1. A live data stream of surveillance data, to feed your #DAA (Detect And Avoid) system
2. A live coverage map & health monitoring stream, to tell you what coverage to expect and if everything is working fine
3. An SLA, to define responsibilities between supplier and user
There are many people to thank for this achievement, some mentioned here: Alexandra Florin (Wing), Andreea Perca & Benoit Curdy (Federal Office of Civil Aviation Switzerland), Andy Thurling (DroneUp), Jean-Philippe Shepherd & Boško Rafailović + other folks at skyguide, Michael Scott Baum,Phil Kenul, and of course Mary Mikolajewski!
While this is great in finally providing a solid operational framework as our company discretely turns ❼, there are still people questioning the utility of our solution or who don’t understand the value we bring.
I realise that not all drone businesses need what we do. If your application doesn’t demand for it, good for you, and please fly as much as possible. We need more drone businesses out there!
However, if we talk about autonomous BVLOS drone flights, I am seeing that mostly companies that have reached a certain level of maturity in terms of business, technical and regulatory will seek a solution like ours. Otherwise, if a company still has to figure out other issues before “air risk mitigation”, they won’t need INVOLI (yet).
So what to expect for 2024:
– As the industry is almost “crossing the chasm”, there may still be several companies that will hit the ground
– Several others will do thousands of commercial drone flights and will become the status quo
– Companies like Murzilli Consulting, UASolutions or DroneTalks.online will grow even further, because there is still a huge amount of work to be done for the understanding and application of the regulatory and for the communication to get funds
– Following Verizon, more Telcos will loose interest in the drone business and will regroup as suppliers for the industry. In this context, Dimetor business makes even more sense
– More and more standardization work to drive regulation
– Federal Aviation Administration and NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration catching up with the drone business
– By the end of the year it will be clear how, where & when #UTM / #Uspace will be useful and who does it/provides it, but probably still not clear who will pay for it & how much
