United Parcel Service Inc. is seeking approval to operate delivery drones under the same rules as a private jet service, unlocking the potential to carry health-care packages over long distances between hospitals.<\/p>\n
The company is working with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to obtain Part 135 certification this year, a step toward freeing it from current commercial drone limits on where and how far its robot airfleet can fly. UPS is already earning revenue off health-care deliveries such as blood samples within a hospital campus in North Carolina, operating under the more restrictive rules.<\/p>\n
UPS is among a growing segment of operators driving the rapid maturation of the commercial civilian drone industry. Regulators, under pressure to allow commercial expansion, are working with companies willing to commit the time and money to demonstrate they can operate safely, spearheading the expansion.<\/p>\n
The FAA has been urging drone companies over the past year to become certified as small airlines, which means they must have proper training, maintenance and other safety protections in place.<\/p>\n
UPS\u2019s experience operating a cargo airline with almost 550 planes should help smooth the process of winning FAA approval, said Bala Ganesh, vice president of UPS\u2019s advanced technology group. The courier is joining with dronemaker Matternet, which is seeking FAA certification of its M2 rotorcraft that already are making deliveries in Swiss cities, including Zurich.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re shooting for is getting to be a fully certified U.S. drone operator with no special exemptions,\u201d Ganesh said. \u201cThis is no longer testing or story boarding. That year is over. Now we\u2019re moving to deployment of a fully sustained model.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Wing LLC, a Google offshoot, was the first drone operator to receive Part 135 certification and other companies, including Uber Technologies Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.\u2019s air division, are in pursuit.<\/p>\n
There are major hurdles that remain before pilotless aircraft can fly routinely over populated areas or across long distances. The industry is grappling with how to create an air traffic management system for drones, and the government wants an identification system to prevent rogue operators from becoming a security problem.<\/p>\n
UPS plans to roll out its drone delivery service first to U.S. hospital campuses, and then fly beyond the line of sight between health-care facilities, Ganesh said. By the end of 2020, UPS wants to be \u201cfully scaled\u201d for the health-care sector, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure the cost scale will go down over time and we\u2019ll scale to other business applications,\u201d Ganesh said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2019 Bloomberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United Parcel Service Inc. is seeking approval to operate delivery drones under the same rules as a private jet service, unlocking the potential to carry health-care packages over long distances between hospitals.<\/p>\n
The company is working with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to obtain Part 135 certification this year, a step toward freeing it from current commercial drone limits on where and how far its robot airfleet can fly. UPS is already earning revenue off health-care deliveries such as blood samples within a hospital campus in North Carolina, operating under the more restrictive rules.<\/p>\n
UPS is among a growing segment of operators driving the rapid maturation of the commercial civilian drone industry. Regulators, under pressure to allow commercial expansion, are working with companies willing to commit the time and money to demonstrate they can operate safely, spearheading the expansion.<\/p>\n
The FAA has been urging drone companies over the past year to become certified as sma..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}