Everybody wants more drones

If there was one central theme to Tuesday’s White House Office of Science and Technology Policy workshop on drones and the future of aviation it can best be characterized by a single question: How do we work as fast as possible to expand capacity for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) while at the same time staying safe?

Today, @WhiteHouseOSTP hosts a first-of-its-kind event on commercial drones and the future of aviation—a tech shift changing our economy.

— Denis McDonough (@Denis44) August 2, 2016

All of the workshop’s lightning talks, panels and intro speeches touched on this question to some extent. And this in itself showed the broad range of stakeholders in the question. There were public servants from the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and more in the room, joined by academics, private-sector leaders and other interest groups.
And all, for one reason or another, said, Yeah, we’d like to use more drones.
Fittingly, the workshop was all about working together toward that goal.
Several key announcements were made, including but not limited to $35 million in National Science Foundation funding to “accelerate the understanding of how to intelligently and effectively design, control, and apply UAS to beneficial applications” over the next five years; commitments by the Interior to use UAS in search and rescue missions and more; the revelation that UAS “industry associations” will “implement a broad educational effort around privacy best practices for users;” and the fact that New York will invest $5 million in the growth of the UAS industry in that state.
Attendees also heard from two panels, one on the role of research and development and data in policymaking (takeaway: we need more, good data on drone safety) and the other on “advancing technological progress” (takeaway: we need more, good data, preferably gathered in “low-risk” environments like testing grounds).
After the workshop, which took place in an auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the gathered drone enthusiasts filed out, to a demo and then back to work. Back to figuring out how we can use and benefit from drone technology “safely and expeditiously,” as FAA’s assistant administrator for NextGen, Jim Eck, put it. Back (we hope) to gathering that data.