It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! …

It’s the first drone approved for commercial overland use!

The FAA gave BP permission to fly the UAV over Alaska yesterday. (What could possibly go wrong?) Adam Clark Estes describes the drone as “less like a hobbyist toy and more like what the military uses on the battlefield”:

In fact, AeroVironment’s Puma AE drone is one of the military’s favorite models. At nearly five feet long with a wingspan of nine feet, this is a sizable aircraft. … This makes good sense when you consider that the drone’s main duty will be patrolling BP’s oil pipelines in Alaska. AeroVironment’s five-year contract with BP also stipulates that the aircraft will do some 3D-mapping, wildlife monitoring, and the occasional search-and-rescue mission.

This is a good thing. It’s no mystery that drones can do a lot of good by taking over jobs that humans can’t or won’t do. Patrolling potentially dangerous pipelines in Alaska’s deep wilderness certainly qualifies. The location also largely skirts around the privacy issue that the FAA’sstruggled to address in its ongoing process of writing the rules that will dictate how commercial drones will operate in the United States.

Jason Koebler argues that this isn’t the breakthrough it seems to be:

In fact, AeroVironment had already been flying commercial drone missions in the area. Today, the FAA simply ever-so-slightly expanded the area in which AeroVironment can use its drone. Last July, the company became the first ever to gain FAA approval to fly the drone over the North Slope of the Arctic for oil spill monitoring and ocean surveys. That’s why you’re seeing the claim that this is the first commercial drone approved to be flown over land.

But Megan Garber argues that the launch heralds a new era of civilian UAV use:

As Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx put it in a statement, “These surveys on Alaska’s North Slope are another important step toward broader commercial use of unmanned aircraft. The technology is quickly changing, and the opportunities are growing.”

And they’re growing because the government is fostering them. The Obama administration, The Verge points out, has considered offering a “streamlined” approval process for low-risk commercial use of drones (like farming, say, and filmmaking). It is also considering giving permissions to seven different aerial filmmaking companies that use drones in their photography. And in April, the FAA announced the certification of a site in North Dakota for testing the Draganflyer X4ES, a camera-equipped quadcopter. The site, the FAA pointed out at the time, will not only allow for the gathering of safety and maintenance data on the drones; it will also help the agency to develop rules for UAV operation.

Which is to say: The frontier is fading. In its place will be standards, regulations, and crowded skies.