White House Buries the Lead in Announcing Its Investment in Drone Research
The Obama administration is hosting a workshop today on Drones and the Future of Aviation — “to advance and celebrate the potential of unmanned aircraft systems.” Read the formal announcement here.
The workshop announcement emphasizes the $35 Million in research funding by the National Science Foundation into the potential applications for commercial drones, specifically calling out monitoring and inspection of physical infrastructure, smart disaster response, agricultural monitoring, and the study of severe storms.
But just as important, and probably receiving less attention, is the call to the UAS industry to develop “best practices” regarding privacy. This invitation to industry to set standards is in keeping with much of the drone regulation to date. Given the paucity of federal and State laws on the topic, local government in particular may end up looking to industry standards to assist it in developing and setting rules relating to privacy standards/rights. The ACLU also is actively involved in setting such standards and has developed a series of recommendations for local government’s use of drones.