Iris Automation was founded five years ago with the goal to create a collision avoidance system that could be used on aircrafts. As you can imagine, this is an incredibly important and difficult problem to solve.
The future of aviation will shift towards autonomy, meaning that the industry must ensure that it finds ways to supplement and eventually replace what is essentially the last line of defense in aviation today – the human pilot.
Iris makes flying safer through technology and using computer vision and machine learning, providing one of the critical layers needed to keep both piloted and unpiloted aircrafts safe.
To find out more, I speak with the CEO of Iris Automation, Jon Damush, to understand where we are today in terms of drone technology and the growing list of different applications and use cases.
“The industry has advanced incredibly in its ability to support a much wider range of applications, developed from what was essentially hobbyist drones,” he explains. “Today, many aircrafts have been purpose-built with high levels of reliability and are able to collect data through far more capable and diverse innovation.”
The next step for businesses in the industry is to realise the economic value of drones through collision avoidance that will help open the doors to new use cases and commercial opportunities.
The Integration Process
Iris partners with many drone companies in the market today and continues to grow relationships across the industry. One example is its collaboration with the UK’s Thales SOARIZON and Skyports, where Iris helps safely distribute medical supplies to remote communities.
In this case, drone technology is used to drastically improve distribution networks through smaller unmanned aircrafts that are able to deliver medical supplies to hard to reach areas.
“Essentially, our value proposition is to provide a sort of proxy for the human in the cockpit,” says Damush. “Not in terms of completely replacing the human, but more in terms of providing a detection capability that mirrors the human’s performance with respect to avoiding collisions.”
In addition to removing the pilot, drones are able to bring in an extremely cost-effective solution for moving goods. The cameras and computer vision used are relatively inexpensive in comparison and can be consistently aligned with regulations, from size, weight and power.
It is clear that unmanned aircrafts are a safer solution as they remove the pilot and can operate on advanced software. However, the safety and security of the technology itself is critical to ensuring the wider integration of drones into the airspace.
Although there are many individual companies like Iris making progress, collaboration is the only way that the industry can achieve this level of safety and efficiency.
“The reality is that it will take a tonne of collaboration across the industry because there can be no single solution,” continues Damush. “We need systems like Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM), Remote ID, Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC), onboard aircraft detection and more. All of these layer together to increase safety.”
Although no single system can provide this level of security, each system must have its own protections built-in, before a systemwide approach can be integrated in order to combat any sort of attack or glitch.
The Waiting Game
Despite the technology being readily available, drones are being held back by regulations from governments around the world. It is incredibly difficult for these authorities to create new regulations for an uncommon transportation system.
Companies like Iris must work with authorities and governments to develop appropriate regulations and ensure the best possible environment for drone applications.
“Industry participants need to partner with customers and regulators to develop the data and experience necessary to inform standards and regulations,” adds Damush. “Today, this happens through special, limited permissions that can be used to fly advanced operations and missions. But to go beyond this exception-based approach, the industry and customers must work with global regulators to explore use cases, execute trial operations, and most importantly share data.”
Iris is actively participating with customers and other industry partners in government-sponsored programs that accelerate this learning loop. Damush and his team hope that this drives more customers to join these programs to help the industry develop the regulations more quickly.
This couldn’t come soon enough, as there are already discussions and proven concepts for urban air taxis.
However, these systems are still some way off, due to all of the issues already mentioned. Although many companies are claiming that their services are ready, cities are not.
“The challenge is not the technology; in some ways, that is the easy part is flying the prototypes successfully, which we have seen from Boeing, Airbus, Joby, Wisk, Lilium and Volocopter,” continues Damush. “The two main challenges are certification rules and economics of the business model.”
It takes roughly six-to-seven years to bring a new aircraft type to market under existing technologies and certification regulations. Damush tells me that fully autonomous, electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft certification rules are not even completely written yet. So, if it takes roughly 10 years to get small drone rules written, you can imagine that autonomous air taxis are a decade away at best.
The Future is Bright
Damush expects to see an incremental approach that starts with new aircraft designs being operated the same way aircraft are operated today. These operations will bring new aircrafts to the market and help explore the economics of the air-taxi use case.
“Initial operations will most likely have a human pilot onboard,” he says. “As time goes on, we will see increasing levels of automation added to these systems to the point where the only reason a human is onboard is to make the passengers feel comfortable.”
Damush is excited about the developing aviation sector in general and looks forward to these concepts coming to fruition. He is optimistic about the industry as it approaches 2030.
“The future looks very bright for the industry. Air mobility, first response and public safety, package delivery, infrastructure inspection, fire suppression, agriculture, and more will be significantly impacted by drones,” says Damush.
As the world continues to battle a pandemic that has completely transformed the way we live and move, the use cases for drone technology continues to rise. Once we overcome this challenge, we will see a new societal acceptance of the technology that will allow companies such as Iris to harness advances in connectivity and data processing that will open amazing new possibilities.
Keyword: Solving the ‘Drone Dilemma’ With Iris Automation CEO Jon Damush