Over the past year, high school students at King Low Heywood Thomas School in Stamford have worked with their teacher Susan Heintz and computer programmer Bill Piedra to design a potentially life-saving water safety device.
It’s called Project Ryptide and it’s a drone accessory created to deliver a self-inflating life preserver to distressed swimmers, because a drone can reach a struggling swimmer quicker than a lifeguard could swim out to them. The device has been met with waves of enthusiasm from drone lovers as far away as France. However, if the Federal Aviation Administration’s proposed guidelines for drones become law, future projects of this kind may be impossible.
Under the proposed regulations released in February, drone operators would have to be at least 17 years old. This stipulation could have prohibited student involvement on Project Ryptide. “If that regulation was a law a year ago we wouldn't have been able to come up with this project,” says Nick Smith, a senior at King Low Heywood Thomas School, who is actively involved with Project Ryptide.
“If that regulation was a law a year ago we wouldn't have been able to come up with this project,” says Nick Smith, a senior at King Low Heywood Thomas School, who is actively involved with Project Ryptide.
After Connecticut Magazine wrote a story about the project in March, Project Ryptide team members were contacted by a drone enthusiast on Twitter who urged them to voice their opposition to the age restrictions proposed. As part of a class assignment the students submitted comments to the FAA on the proposed regulations.
The long-awaited FAA proposals are part of the government agency's efforts to begin regulating commercial drone use. Under the proposed rule, to fly a drone or Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) one would need to be a certified “operator.” To become an operator, in addition to being 17 years old a person would need to pass an aeronautical knowledge test and obtain an FAA UAS operator certificate, and then pass FAA knowledge tests every 24 months. With an operator certificate, drones could only be flown in the daylight, within site of the operator, below 500 feet and under 100 mph.
Smith and his fellow students are concerned about more than just the age restriction. “We disagree with the condition that an operator must take a test every 24 months to prove their knowledge of drones,” he says. “When you get a car license you don’t have to take a test after your initial testing for a license. Why should piloting a drone be different? While this is standard practice for private pilots, a drone weighs much less and therefore is much less of a threat than a small plane.”
The students at King Low Heywood Thomas School are not the only ones unhappy with the proposed regulations. The FAA received more than 4,400 comments by the deadline for public comment in April. The agency will now spend 18 to 24 months analyzing the comments and possibly changing the proposals. Among those who commented was Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president of public policy, whose company—like Google and many drone companies—opposes the proposed regulations. Particularly problematic for Amazon is the line of sight requirement that would effectively torpedo the company’s highly publicized plan for its Prime Air 30-minute drone delivery service. Misener said the device "will unlock the transformative potential that small (unmanned aircraft systems) offer for package delivery and myriad other exciting, and even lifesaving, applications – for example, the delivery of medical supplies and search and rescue operations."
As for the notion that kids inherently don’t have the ability to operate a device as complicated as a drone, Smith isn’t buying it. “What age did you start driving a mechanical machine that weighs more than a ton and can go up to 100 mph?” he asks. “There is potential danger in everything from fertilizer to hot tubs. If the kids have the proper training or supervision, let them explore their passion.”
Source: connecticutmag.com