Waiver Watch | Ep 38: American Robotics & Aerial Panorama
Welcome to Waiver Watch!
Here is the agenda for this Episode 38:
Weekly Waiver Totals
American Robotics § 107.31
Malcolm Judd § 107.51(b)
1. | Weekly. Waiver. TOTALS
July 30 - August 5, 2020 saw 27 waivers approved.
Some interesting waiver tidbits this week:
Radarview, LLC renewed a 107.29 waiver - the original waiver was approved on January 19, 2018 with an expiration of January 31, 2022. The renewal changes address but retains the original expiration date. We’re seeing this trend consistently now, night waiver renewals typically keep the original expiration date.
One 107.39(a) waiver uses a ParaZero SafeAir Phantom and one uses a ParaZero SafeAir Mavic.
California often takes home the most waivers on a given week, but they are largely night waivers.
2. | 107W-2020-01574
American Robotics, Inc - Vijay Somandepalli
§ 107.31
American Robotics, Inc has been quietly developing a drone-in-a-box solution for many years now and they received another 107.31 waiver to continue their testing and development.
American Robotics develops the Scout, Scoutbase, and Scoutview systems to provide an end-to-end autonomous data capture, management, and analytics drone platform.
They’ve been working on a string of waivers to conduct BVLOS operations at specific locations. The BVLOS waivers are fairly standard except for one interesting provision:
10. The remote PIC must ensure the detect system is operational and will identify any non-participating aircraft prior to their entry into the planned operational area. For the purpose of this Waiver, the operational area is defined in provision 34;
The waivers currently requires the RPIC to be physically located at the sUAS location and view the airspace, but it’s to see them using testing some means of technology to eventually replace the human eyeball component. We’re not sure which detect and avoid solution is being tested either.
3. | 107W-2020-02744
Malcolm Judd
§ 107.51(b)
Malcolm Judd received a high altitude waiver this week and this one is interesting in that it covers 12 specific point up to 1,600’ AGL.
Malcolm Judd and his company Rovit appear to have a unique business model developing VR and AR experiences for businesses. Our hypothesis on this waiver is that these 12 points in Utah are his next project, creating aerial 360 degree panorama and AR experiences for these areas. Here is an example of what he’s creating:
Very cool idea!
Wrap Up
Thanks for reading this week! Leave us a comment if you have any questions or would like us to write about any specific waivers next time! If you have a waiver and would like to join us on the show to talk about it and other waivers, drop us a note! Until then…
