The Virginia Tech University’s Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership’s drone partners include commercial delivery company Alphabet subsidiary Wing, Dominion, an energy utility using drones for infrastructure inspection and State Farm, an insurance company using drones for post disaster damage assessment.
Wing received its Part 135 air carrier certification from the FAA in April 2019 to provide commercial drone delivery. Part 135 was developed with manned aircraft in mind to cover non-scheduled charter and air taxi operations. Now it is being adapted to approve commercial drone operations. The FAA notes that Part 135 is the only path for small drones to carry packages beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) in commercial operations. The FAA is currently working on six additional part 135 applications from drone operators for air carrier certificates.
“There is a concerted effort to use existing manned aviation regulations to enable this Wing operation in Virginia,” said Mark Blanks, director of the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership (MAAP). “There are some exceptions for Wing in portions of Part 135 that are not applicable or which don’t need to be complied with by drones. So the operation uses the existing framework of Part 135 with modifications.”
Drugs to coffee
The first trial deliveries were conducted by Wing in partnership with the MAAP as long ago as 2016. “There is a very close relationship between the two organizations,” Blanks says. MAAP helps Wing engage with the local community to share information on the operation. There was months of outreach before deliveries started and the consultation has continued throughout the Covid-19 crisis.
In Virginia, Wing has been performing daily drone deliveries under Part 135 since October 2019. Other companies participating in drone deliveries in Christiansburg, Virginia a few miles from the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, include FedEx, a Walgreen drug store, a sweet shop, a coffee shop and a café and bakery.
Wing uses drones of its own design which have developed in several ways since initial testing in 2012. The current model weighs 10.6 lbs (5kg), has a wingspan of 3.3ft (1m) and is capable of flying up to 70mph on a round trip up to 12 miles. It can carry a package weighing 3.3 lbs (1.5kg).
Most local residents have been enthusiastic about the drone deliveries. While elderly people are not known to embrace new technology, many have used the service – in Virginia one of the regular customers is an elderly couple in their early 80s. Wing has added more medicine and food delivery options from Walgreens during the coronavirus crisis, though not yet prescriptions. The delivery service allows customers to avoid having to visit the drug store by having supplies dropped off in their back yard. Customers can order cold brewed coffee from one store and fresh pastry made the same morning from another.
The Wing drone service trial in Virginia doesn’t have an end date and Virginia Tech hopes the company decides to keep the operation going indefinitely. During the trial period Wing is not charging customers for its delivery service and the items cost the same they do in a store in town.
Drone park
There are Virginia Tech students involved in studying air traffic management. Those pursuing aerospace engineering form the basis of a “design, build, fly” community mentored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), which sponsors this initiative.
The University operates a drone park that is the size of a football field and has nets 85ft tall. “It is probably the largest netted facility in the country,” says Blanks. A student can walk out of the classroom and over to the drone park to fly a prototype without worrying about the challenge of obtaining a flight approval. The campus is located in the middle of the town of Blacksburg and is adjacent to an airport. Virginia Tech University also owns 1,800 acres off campus with a hangar used for drone testing. Blanks house is adjacent to this facility and was the first one in Virginia where Wing made a drone delivery.
Blanks says that in the last few years the AIAA design, build, fly has been more focused on autonomy and small autopilot systems rather than airfoils.
Virginia Tech University’s faculty, staff and students bring their multi-disciplinary experience and expertise to bear on commercial drone development. Many of the university’s aerospace engineering graduates go on to work at the FAA or in the aerospace industry.
Mark Blanks, director of Virginia Tech University’s Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership
The FAA is taking advantage of Virginia Tech’s drone capabilities. The university is one of seven FAA test sites and one of ten leading participants in the FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Integration Pilot Program (IPP), which was started in 2017 to test civil and public drone operations in the national airspace system. The Wing project is part of IPP.
The IPP participants are testing operational concepts including BVLOS, flying at night and over people as well as package delivery and detect and avoid technology. Virginia Tech is also working with the FAA as one of three test sites to participate in its Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) pilot program. The FAA is using this UTM Pilot Program (UPP) to study flight planning, separation, weather services and communications for drone operations.
Wing, which was launched in 2012, has developed a lightweight aircraft and navigation system to deliver food, medicine and household items directly to homes in a matter of minutes. The route is planned by Wing’s UTM (unmanned traffic management) software to avoid obstacles, and comply with regulations. The drones avoid schools and high rise buildings and avoid flying over the same house multiple times. Remote pilots also monitor local air traffic. Wing currently makes deliveries at four locations: two in Australia in the suburbs of Canberra and Brisbane, one in Virginia and since June 2019 one in Helsinki, Finland.
“Our focus is not so much on what we are carrying but rather airspace integration, airworthiness of the aircraft and how to do things safely”
The Wing delivery service has been working with Virginia Tech since 2016 and has proved popular with local residents near the University, who are able to order groceries, drugs and coffee using a mobile app
“Recently there has been a dramatic increase in the use of the service,” says Jacob Demmitt of Wing who handles drone deliveries in Virginia. Wing’s drone delivery service have been growing in popularity at all four locations after the coronavirus hit and local residents have been staying home more due to restrictions. Wing’s delivery orders at its four around the world doubled in February and March and then doubled again in March and April until it reached a level of 1,000 deliveries in two weeks then 1,000 in one week. “We’ve seen about a 350% increase in sign-ups to our services around the world,” says Demmitt.
Quieter deliveries
Wing is dealing with two main concerns in the communities it serves – aircraft noise and privacy. Sound reduction remains a top priority. The company has developed new propellers that emit a lower pitched noise which Wing says sounds like cars driving by on the street. When it comes to privacy, the only camera on the aircraft is for low resolution still images of terrain used to determine location. The company says people can’t be recognized and there is no live feed of images even to the safety pilot. Wing also points out that drone deliveries reduce vehicle traffic.
Orders are made using a mobile app and the drone operates from a delivery facility at low altitude of around 30 to 40m. It hovers at an altitude of about 7.5m to lower the package on a tether. Packages of 1.5kg or less can be delivered.
Virginia Tech is equipped with a surveillance capability for drone testing. It has an SRC Gryphon R1400 3-D active electronically scanned array radar system that can be deployed to rural locations in Virginia to track the drones involved in tests. The radar and the tower used to raise it 100ft off the ground can be moved about on a trailer. The radar can queue cameras on where to look to identify an air vehicle.
Virginia Tech University’s large drone park lets students fly prototypes and conduct R&D without flight approvals
“Our focus is not so much on what we are carrying but rather airspace integration, airworthiness of the aircraft and how to do things safely, regardless of what we put in a delivery box,” Blanks says. “People may think of a test site as a place to go fly a drone, but the majority of our work for the past three years is about safety cases,” Blanks says. “We help companies build a safety case. They want to fly and we develop a concept of operations and gather the risk assessment data to validate and assemble the safety cases.” The FAA requires companies to use a safety case discipline when conducting commercial drone operations.
Some of MAPPs drone tests have involved up to 75 people including researchers and engineers involved with manned and unmanned flights. “These are large groups trying to solve complex problems,” Blanks says. The flight testing may take months of work leading up to a test period that is fairly short. Rigorous safety protocols are followed.
“We’ve seen about a 350% increase in sign-ups to our services around the world”
One UTM test for NASA involved ten drones in the air being deconflicted by a UTM system with manned aircraft in the mix. Virginia Tech conducts dozens of tests every year and the MAAP team has grown from 5 to 20 employees. The university has a national certificate of authorization (COA) from the FAA for operations up to 1,200ft and it has conducted tests around the USA beyond Virginia’s borders. MAAP is also engaged in detect and avoid research and testing and is supporting several NASA UTM and drone projects.
Coordinated testing
MAPP is conducting three projects under the FAA’s White House initiated IPP effort. In addition to the Wing deliveries this includes projects with Dominion Energy and the State Farm insurance group. MAAP has developed a process for creating a safety case that has been supported by the FAA. Virginia Tech has presented this method at the FAA and Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) drone symposium for several years in a row.
Dominion has been active in the use of drones to survey its electrical transmission lines and natural gas pipelines starting in 2014. Initially the company trained some of its field engineers, technicians, designers and surveyors to use drones. The company started with six pilots and is now up to 50. “This was the quickest way to implement the use of drones in different business units,” says Nathaniel Robie, Dominion’s unmanned aircraft systems program manager.
Drones are being used on a daily basis and providing benefits such as surveying transmission lines or pipelines that run through swamps or over high elevations. A small quad copter that weighs less than 55 lbs (25kg) can conduct a survey in a matter of minutes where inspectors on the ground might take a couple of hours just to get to the location under scrutiny.
“We are seeing the benefits on a daily basis,” Robie says. “It is definitely an efficiency and safety tool.”
Dominion employees possess the training, certifications and licenses needed for daily or weekly inspections. “They can use drones how ever they see fit,” Robie says. The company also plans to recruit drone pilots as new hires to build its capability in the use of the technology.
Dominion Energy engineers inspect power lines using a drone as part of Virginia Tech University’s Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership
Robie got his start in the US Air Force working as a forward air controller to provide close air support, which he did during a combat tour in Afghanistan. When he left the military he became an aeronautical manager at LaGuardia Airport in New York City working on airside operations certifying runways and taxiways in compliance with FAA regulations.
Robie says Dominion also plans to use drones to monitor progress on some of the company’s construction projects. Some of the inspections of these projects now use the old methods of pen and pencil rather than photographic records. Photos taken from the same perspective each time can be used to keep track of things like cracks in existing hydroelectric dam structures, for example. Dominion has found it can detect cracks measuring a centimeter or less. Robie says methane detectors are becoming small enough to be carried on a drone and his company may use them to search for leaks in its natural gas pipelines.
Dominion has drone operators fly the air vehicle while sensor operators focus on the soda straw view of what is being inspected, such as a transmission line that may have integrity problems, a sagging line or vegetation building up around the right of way. When a discrepancy is identified it can be photographed or recorded on video.
“We need to demonstrate conclusively that ambitious operations can be done safely. This waiver, and the volume of research that backs it up, shows that this approach works”
Dominion began working with Virginia Tech in 2019 under IPP to experiment with BVLOS techniques for linear infrastructure inspection. “It has been a long road and we have learned a lot in this process with good give and take with the FAA,” Robie says. He says MAAP and the FAA have been instrumental in helping Dominion. The FAA is helping Dominion navigate the rules and regulations to ensure safe operations in the NAS and MAAP, helping with technical expertise in detect and avoid. Dominion is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia and it employs many Virginia Tech graduates.
There are still a lot of hurdles involved as Dominion works to expand its use of BVLOS in the 20-state area it serves. A blanket waiver for BVLOS operations is not possible now, but may be at some point in the future. BVLOS is also a key part of State Farm’s effort to use drones to quickly assess damage after significant events like hurricanes, tornados and hail storms. State Farm is the only insurance company selected by the FAA to be part of the IPP initiative. The program includes waivers to operate BVLOS and over people for research purpose
State Farm has been testing business applications for drones and safety issues since 2015 and teamed up with MAAP on the IPP in 2018. Months of research on air vehicle communications and navigation performance and the risk of human injury allowed State Farm to obtain a new FAA waiver allowing long distance flights over densely populated areas. This analysis used safety processes developed by MAPP.
Dominion then used a 1.5lbs (600g) EBee fixed wing drone with a wingspan of 38in to capture high resolution imagery of the catastrophic damage in North and South Carolina from Hurricane Florence. This was a Category 4 storm with 130mph winds that came ashore in September, 2018. State Farm uses what it learns about the damage resulting from a major storm to quickly allocate its resources and determine what insured property is no longer habitable.
“This is a pivotal moment that demonstrates the value of a risk-based safety case development process, says Blanks. “We need to demonstrate conclusively that ambitious operations can be done safely. This waiver, and the volume of research that backs it up, shows that this approach works.” v