Autonomous Drones Could Change Aviation Landscape

Massachusetts company acquired FAA approval to fly its ‘Scout’ drone with no human interface last year.

Thursday, March 03, 2022 at 01:49 PM ET

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The autonomous system allows a user to monitor a single drone, or multiple drones, at distances up to 1,000 miles. [Photo: American Robotics]

Key Takeaways:

American Robotics received the first-ever FAA approval for fully autonomous drone operation, requiring no human pilot or line of sight, for its industrial commercial "Scout" drone.
Offered as a Robot-as-a-Service, the Scout system enables remote asset monitoring for industries like oil & gas (e.g., Chevron), agriculture, and mining, significantly improving efficiency, safety, and providing real-time data insights.
The autonomous drones incorporate layered safety features like ground-based detection and geofencing, with American Robotics planning significant expansion to monitor millions of assets globally.

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In spring 2021, the FAA gave American Robotics (NASDAQ: ONDS), a Massachusetts-based company, permission to fly its industrial commercial “Scout” drone autonomously, requiring no human pilot interface or line of sight observation from the ground.

This was the first such approval from the FAA and forms one indication of how the future of industrial work might look without pilots. The operation would foreseeably allow railroad, pipeline, farming, and mining companies to monitor their assets remotely, with no compromise to human operator safety.