Argonne has joined the Federal Aviation Administration’s “Know Before You Fly” campaign to educate users of unmanned aircraft (UA) systems about safe and responsible operations within the national airspace system. The campaign explains where, when and how high UAs may be flown.
Argonne is strategically located within a few miles of Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway International airports, one of the world’s busiest airspaces for general aviation, corporate air traffic, air taxi services and scheduled air carriers. UAs hold significant promise for a variety of commercial applications, including package delivery, emergency response, precision agriculture, environmental assessment and critical infrastructure monitoring. Several UA R&D areas coincide with Argonne expertise — energy storage, autonomous systems, sensors, embedded and high-performance computing and geospatial analytics, among others.
Sales of recreational UAs have skyrocketed in the past two years. At the same time, an increasing number of incidents have occurred involving UAs and critical infrastructure, the public and aviation facilities. Most of these incidents reflect a lack of knowledge from operators about the rules associated with the recreational use of UAs.
“Without question, the era of unmanned aviation is finally here to stay. As these systems become less expensive and easier to operate, we can expect to see an ever-increasing number of recreational UAs in use in the coming years. As such, we believe that all users of the national airspace system should understand how to safely and legally operate UAs,” said Eric Swanson, a Cooperative Education researcher for Global Security Sciences’s Risk and Infrastructure Science Center.
By joining the “Know Before You Fly” campaign, which is funded by the FAA and sponsored by the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, Argonne highlights its commitment to support recreational, commercial and public sector operators in their decisions to incorporate unmanned aircraft of all sizes and types into their recreational, commercial or mission-based objectives.
Argonne is proud to be associated with industry partners such as the Academy of Model Aeronautics and the Small UAV Coalition in our ongoing commitment to enhance UA safety worldwide, and is looking forward to the opportunity to coordinate with end users as well as regulatory bodies in our mission to develop sustainable methods of securing the nation’s airspace.