(12-23-2016, 08:58 AM)Peetwo Wrote: Xmas Entertainment: The Comardy hour followed by charades -
To follow on from the P9 -- sympathies for CASA on UAV/RPAs, perhaps the following Oz article highlights how we have only just breeched the tip of the iceberg when it come to drones:
Quote:Online shoppers need drones: Domino's bossDomino's Pizza boss Don Meij says an impending surge in online shopping means Australia soon won't have enough delivery drivers to keep up with demand and drones - just like the ones his own company is trialling - are the inevitable answer.
- Petrina Berry
- Australian Associated Press
- 10:02PM December 22, 2016
Mr Meij, who runs one of the country's busiest and most tech-savvy delivery services, says the need for drone deliveries will only increase when online retail giant Amazon arrives in Australia next year.
Amazon is widely expected to launch its general merchandise and fresh food e-commerce business, starting with Melbourne, in September next year.
Mr Meij says Amazon's arrival will drive even greater uptake of online shopping in Australia, fuelling the need for autonomous drone deliveries - a service being trialled by big players such as Amazon, Google and Australia Post as well as Domino's.
"(Amazon) will be very good for Australia," Mr Meij told AAP.
"It will lift the profile of online shopping: more and more consumers will want to buy online and have it delivered to their home or office.
"It would absolutely drive demand for drones. There won't be enough humans to deliver items that people want to buy on the net."
Mr Meij said Domino's could face a shortage of delivery drivers within two years in Australia and New Zealand as more customers order via mobile app or website.
That change is part of the motivation for the company's trial of deliveries in New Zealand with drone maker Flirtey.
The service uses autonomous drones loaded with destination coordinates - as opposed to remote-controlled units - to fly pizzas from store to customer.
When it reaches the destination, the pizza box is lowered by cable while hovering 30 metres above ground - in line with Australian regulations that prohibit drones from coming within 30 metres of a person.
The drone is monitored remotely by a person and Domino's plans to eventually have one person overseeing a small number of drones.
The trial is ongoing and Mr Meij said he hopes to have a number of Domino's NZ stores making daily drone deliveries by the end of 2017.
He said safety, privacy and job loss fears around the commercialisation of drones were unwarranted.
"The safest place on the planet is between 150 feet and 400 feet above the ground - above 400 feet you've got helicopters and planes and on the ground you have all sorts of obstacles: people, cars and dogs," he said.
"We are not proposing to have drones near an airport or high rises."
Mr Meij also said cameras fitted to drones act like security cameras in stores and would not invade people's privacy.
"The content would only be looked at if there were any safety concerns and it's all coded and secure, like any data collected," he said.
"And if these drones ever fail they have parachutes onboard so they float to the ground."
He said drones would move jobs upstream, creating a need for people to build, repair, monitor and manage drones.
Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) spokesman Peter Gibson said drones were some time away from being able to safely deliver parcels in bustling cities.
"No one has a drone today that is reliable enough and clever enough, to fly autonomously from any shop, through city streets and to a home to drop a parcel off," he said.
"There's lot of technology challenges to be addressed but I'm not suggesting they won't be solved.
"There are plenty of companies doing trials and the regulations will have to keep up with the technology breakthroughs as they happen."
A Senate inquiry into remotely piloted aircraft systems is currently looking at retailers' use of drones and Domino's is among the organisations to have made a submission.
"K" said: You could and perhaps should, actually treat the whole situation as one of ‘public safety’, rather than purely a matter of ‘air safety’.
Personally I agree there has to be a delineation between 'air' & 'public' safety, which means drawing a line in the sky on where the Feds give way to State and local laws. Perhaps these issues will be examined in the course of the Senate inquiry...
Moving on and back to this intriguing "K" catch:
Quote:61. One of the important ways in which CASA is empowered to conduct the safety regulation of Australian civil air operations is by ‘developing effective enforcement strategies to secure compliance with aviation safety standards’61.
62. CASA’s approach to enforcement is set out in its Enforcement Manual, which has been amended to better reflect the principles of CASA’s Regulatory Philosophy.62 In exercising its enforcement powers, the Enforcement Manual provides:
Okay just a quick check back to the latest version of the CASA EM - see HERE - still lists version 4.4 from January 2016 as the current amendment.
Now although that version did incorporate the supposedly newly adopted CASA Regulatory Philosophy...
Quote:2.4 CASA’s Enforcement Policy – High-Level Principles
In his Statement of Expectations for the CASA Board for the period 16 April 2015 to 30 June 2017, the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development re-emphasised the Government’s continuing focus on aviation safety as the highest priority, subject to a range of corollary considerations.
Further to the Minister’s Statement, in September 2015 CASA published its Regulatory Philosophy to guide and direct CASA’s approach to the performance of its regulatory functions and the exercise of its regulatory powers. The ten principles that comprise CASA’s Regulatory Philosophy are set out below...
...The policy set out in this Manual describes the way CASA uses its enforcement-related powers to regulate in a manner consistent with CASA’s Regulatory Philosophy, the Minister’s expectations and broader Government policy. While all of the principles of the Regulatory Philosophy are applicable to CASA’s actions, those set out below are highlighted in the specific context of this Manual.
...as was highlighted in the AP embuggerance thread - Attempted embuggerance & a Leopard's spots - & Ah yes; I remember it well....
Quote:..Until such time as all references to E&CC, plus the McCormick black-letter rule of embuggerance are erased from all CASA records, including the Director's preface of the Enforcement (embuggerance) manual the disbanding of the E&CC is merely an empty token gesture designed to once again temporarily placate an aggrieved industry..
..the above quoted section of the CASA submission (61 & 62), is really just a smoke'n'mirrors charade covering up the fact that CASA has had, under Skidmore and now Comardy, absolutely no intention of reforming itself or restoring trust (as per the Forsyth review)...
To put that into context with CASA UAV/RPA enforcement, this leaves the door open for black letter law embuggerance by any less than honest, sociopathic CASA Officer (FOI/AWI/Investigator). An unscrupulous individual that may just have a discriminatory dislike for a UAV operator, who has possibly contravened some overly prescriptive and impossible to define regulation (for example read: Bellamy andCivil Aviation Safety Authority
[2016] AATA 956 29 November 2016).
Meanwhile the true cowboys of the industry, on becoming aware of this double-standard, will go underground and proceed to covertly operate illegally and with little chance of being busted by a completely disengaged, law unto themselves big "R" regulator -
Update 23/12/2016: Now 69 submissions - WOW!
Quote:21 Civil Air Operations Officers Association of Australia (PDF 145 KB)
22 Maurice Blackburn Lawyers (PDF 2941 KB)
23 Helistar Aviation (PDF 578 KB)
24 Thiess Pty Ltd (PDF 225 KB)
25 Air Sport Australia Confederation (PDF 2315 KB)
26 Mr Jason Tepper (PDF 201 KB)
27 Department of the Environment and Energy (PDF 681 KB)
28 Parrot ANZ Pty Ltd (PDF 219 KB)
29 Airservices Australia (PDF 1783 KB)
30 Australia Post (PDF 220 KB)
31 Intel (PDF 378 KB)
32 Australian Pork (PDF 110 KB)
33 National Farmers' Federation (PDF 298 KB)
34 Qantas Group (PDF 275 KB)
35 Australasian Fire & Emergency Service Authorities Council and National Aerial Firefighting Centre (PDF 180 KB)
36 Telstra Corporation (PDF 190 KB)
37 Australian Industry Group (PDF 611 KB)
38 Victorian Farmers Federation (PDF 322 KB)
39 Australian Airline Pilots' Association (PDF 79 KB)
40 Domino's Pizza Enterprises Ltd (PDF 611 KB)
41 Aeroeye (PDF 523 KB)
42 JT Aviation Consulting Pty Ltd (PDF 166 KB)
43 Unmanned Research Aircraft Facility, University of Adelaide (PDF 87 KB)
44 Department of Defence (PDF 35 KB)
45 NSW Farmers (PDF 326 KB)
46 Australian Association for Unmanned Systems (PDF 510 KB)
47 CanberraUAV (PDF 140 KB)
48 NSW Ambulance (PDF 526 KB)
49 Aerial Application Association of Australia Ltd (PDF 152 KB)
50 Model Aeronautical Association of Australia (PDF 1068 KB)
51 Mr Ashley Fairfield (PDF 115 KB)
52 Mr Chris Bird (PDF 608 KB)
53 Mr Graham Giles (PDF 111 KB)
54 RelmaTech Ltd (PDF 658 KB)
55 Mr Ged Griffin (PDF 49 KB) Attachment 1 (PDF 547 KB)
56 Institute of Public Affairs (PDF 294 KB) Attachment 1 (PDF 1645 KB)
57 Australian Strategic Air Traffic Management Group (PDF 291 KB)
58 Regional Aviation Association of Australia (PDF 436 KB)
59 Insurance Council of Australia (PDF 96 KB)
60 DJI (PDF 80 KB)
61 CSIRO (PDF 416 KB)
62 Australian Transport Safety Bureau (PDF 2159 KB)
63 Drone Solutions Pty Ltd (PDF 547 KB)
64 QBE (PDF 316 KB)
65 Piper Alderman (PDF 42 KB)
66 UAS International (PDF 66 KB)
67 Northern Territory Police, Fire and Emergency Services (PDF 11005 KB)
68 Asia-Pacific RPAS Consortium (PDF 563 KB)
69 NSW Government (PDF 319 KB)
MTF...P2
