PrecisionHawk is using its Lancaster drone to investigate the options for letting unmanned air vehicles fly beyond the view of their operators. (Credit: PrecisionHawk) Should commercial operators be able to fly their drones beyond their line of sight? The question is a big deal for Amazon as well as Walmart , Google and other companies that want to use robotic air vehicles to deliver goods to consumers – but the Federal Aviation Administration needs convincing. Now the FAA is trying to nail down an answer, thanks to a series of field tests known as Project Pathfinder . Project Pathfinder is actually a quartet of test programs, aimed at determining the safety of extended drone operations in four scenarios: Last month, BNSF Rail put a Boeing Insitu ScanEagle drone through its paces in New Mexico to study how operators can safely fly long-distance robo-planes even when they’re beyond the line of sight. Northwest News Network reported that the drone successfully inspected sections of a 132-mile stretch of railway. “We were able to prove that we could do this in a rural area on a limited basis without risk to people on the ground or in the air,” Insitu’s Charlton Evans […]
