A&M-Corpus Christi goes to great heights for FAA drone testing site

SAN ANTONIO - As far as university experiments go, this one was fairly simple: Fly an RS-16 drone over the Laguna Madre to see if it could detect oil floating in plastic kiddie pools.

But hopes are that the results of this and other unmanned flight experiments will help shape policies for commercial and civil use of unmanned aerial vehicles, said by many to be the next wave in aviation.

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, which ran the experiment, has applied to oversee one of the Federal Aviation Administration's six test sites for nonmilitary uses of drones.

Their application, a collaborative effort of entities including the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, University of Texas-Arlington, locally based Southwest Research Institute, and the Camber Corp., is one of 25 nationwide and the only one from Texas. The FAA is expected to announce the winners in December.

"We are quite confident about our submission for various reasons, one of which is that we have over 6,000 square miles of air space over varied topography," said Luis Cifuentes, the university's associate vice president for research and dean of graduate studies.

While hobbyists can purchase drones to fly around their own property, guidelines amount to a 1981 advisory for model aircraft that says not to fly them higher than 400 feet or near populated areas.

Commercial uses are prohibited. Civil uses - for law enforcement, for example - require a certificate of authorization.

In 2012, however, Congress passed legislation directing the FAA to integrate unmanned aerial systems into the nation's airspace by 2015.

The test sites are the FAA's way of gathering data to deal with safety and privacy issues.

Ben Gielow, of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, said a lot is riding on the FAA deciding to allow nonmilitary drones into the airspace.

Big money

A study by the association released in March found civil and commercial use of unmanned aircraft systems in the U.S. could have a $82 billion-plus economic impact in the first 10 years.

The effect in Texas would be around $6.5 billion, the study concluded.

There are concerns about safety - there are already stories of drones colliding with manned aircraft and other drones and hitting at least one house - as well as privacy violations.

Private plane owners worry about cluttered airspace.

"We don't have any current regulations or standards for unmanned aircraft," said Heidi Williams, vice president of air traffic and modernization for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. "Until those are laid out and we can ensure that there will be no conflicts between manned and unmanned, there continue to be risks."

The Texas Privacy Act, which became effective Sept. 1, already addresses the privacy issue - it's a Class C misdemeanor for a civilian to use a drone to capture an image of a civilian individual or privately owned property "with the intent to conduct surveillance."

Limits on private use

State Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Terrell, who sponsored the bill, said there are exceptions for law enforcement, but "at the end of the day their best bet would be to get a search warrant."

"The thinking was that no one, including law enforcement, should be able to do indiscriminate surveillance over a private citizen's property without a warrant," Gooden said.

Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the measure may have gone too far in regulating private use.

"The biggest concern we have around the technology is it will be used for mass surveillance, watching everybody all the time, over a very large area," Stanley said. "But when it comes to the private sector … there is a potential for a lot of very helpful, productive innovation."

A lot of that will go on with or without the FAA, said Rory Paul of Volt Aerial Robotics, a drone consultancy in St. Louis.

As debates rage around privacy, Paul said, some of the same companies that produce military and federal law enforcement drones - such as defense contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin - are looking to dominate less controversial realms like agriculture, oil and gas, and mining.

"They get involved in lobbying this process, and they want to make it as restrictive as possible for civilian users," he said. "The idea is to keep small companies out."

11 test ranges

The proposed test site in Texas would encompass a swath of airspace that stretches over the vast, sparsely populated ranchlands of South Texas up to College Station. It includes 11 test ranges for drones, three of which are already FAA approved. Access to the Gulf of Mexico and airspace that is relatively free of manned aircraft traffic are pluses, A&M's Cifuentes said.

Test-site designation could open the ranges to university and commercial research, he said, letting researchers skip having to get federal approval for both the aircraft they are testing and the place to test it.

"We could operate any aircraft at any of the ranges as long as we are willing to certify we can operate those aircraft safely in those ranges," said Ron George, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi's senior research development officer.

Many possible uses

While many know about government use - Corpus Christi in 2010 became U.S. Custom and Border Protection's fourth base for border surveillance drones - civilian uses are just beginning to be explored in the U.S.

Among other uses, drones are being looked at for monitoring nitrogen levels in corn crops, mapping sea grasses for fishermen and detecting oil spills.