Says The FAA Should Allow Industry To Innovate

While high-profile accidents like the one involving a UAV crashing on the White House Lawn grab headlines, developers see an almost unlimited potential for small, unmanned aircraft, and liken it to the beginnings of the Internet in the 1980s.

That's the assessment of Michael Perry, a spokesman for DJI, a Hong Kong-based drone maker whose Phantom drone was involved in the White House accident. Perry told New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo that at its inception, the Internet was used for some specific military applications, but it took more than 10 years for interconnected computers to become practical for the general public to use. “Opening the technology to more people allows for the kind of innovation that nobody can predict," he told the paper.

Indeed, many in the industry see UAVs as a platform, like an operating system for computers or smartphones ... devices that can be used for a multitude of purposes. Jesse Kallman, the head of business development and regulatory affairs at Airware, a start-up that produces a kind of operating system for drones, has called for regulations that take into account different levels of risk for different types of uses. Monitoring crops on a remote Nebraska farm is far different that monitoring a crowd at a football stadium or other event, he told Manjoo.

Kallman says regulations that are too tight will smother innovation in the U.S. and send developers overseas. Manjoo says that U.S. regulators have a history of giving industry some latitude to get started, and it's often successful, citing examples of technology like Wi-Fi and the Internet. UAVs could be the next beneficiary, it the industry is allowed to innovate, he says.

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