August 21, 2018 Comments (0) Views: 2238 September 2018, Short Stories, Tip Sheet

Drone Deliveries are Coming to San Diego

San Diego will be part of the US Department of Transportation’s drone pilot program, but does this leave us with more questions than answers?

Sometime in the near future, drones will be zipping around America’s Finest City, delivering everything from pizzas to medical specimens. But where will they land? Who’s going to fly them? And more important, what’s going to keep them from crashing into buildings, electrical lines, and each other? These are just a few questions that arise from San Diego’s inclusion in the US Department of Transportation’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Pilot Program.

“We just don’t know what we don’t know yet, because we haven’t gone down this road, but it’ll be interesting for sure,” says Lamine Secka, director of SDSU’s Drone Lab.

The city’s objectives include working with the private sector and speeding up FAA approvals. Drones may soon be able to transport medical specimens, deliver restaurant food to consumers via the Uber app, and give advance information to first responders en route to an emergency.

“One of the biggest challenges with drone development has been FAA regulations,” Secka says. “Nobody really knows where the FAA is going to go next. So, it’s hard to push the envelope.”