Drones: Australian opportunities, risks, and challenges

Watch the video of our The future of drones in Australia webinar, held on 11 May 2023. Hear from the project leaders, outcomes from the project, where and how drones are expected to benefit most, public acceptance and areas of concern, and the opportunities for additional research.

Discussion for this webinar was driven by our Validating the benefits of increased drone uptake for Australia project with the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts, and researchers from the University of South Australia, and the final report from that project, The future of drones in Australia.

The Department commissioned the work in order to begin to consider a whole of government approach to the drones sector, to determine what policy developments need to be put in place, and where the most benefit was for the Australian economy and community.

Speakers

The webinar was moderated by Jackie King, Head of Communications and Marketing at iMOVE Australia.

Those presenting in the video are:

• Dr. Mirjam Wiedemann, PhD, Adjunct Research Fellow to the Centre for Enterprise Dynamics in Global Economies at UniSA Business
• Akshay Vij, Associate Professor at UniSA Business
• Benedict Lyons, Director, National Emerging Aviation Technologies Policy, Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts

Final report

The final report for the Validating the benefits of increased drone uptake for Australia project can be downloaded by clicking the button below:

More drone activity

iMOVE and partners are involved in more than a few projects involving drones.

• • Integrating drones into NT Health – this project will pave the way for future delivery of critical items such as cold-storage vaccines (COVID 19) in regional and remote communities. It’s Australia’s first ever healthcare delivery drone trail for regional Australia, and is being undertaken in the Northern Territory, one of the most sparsely settled jurisdictions in the developed world with a significant Indigenous population living in remote communities. Additional insight into this project can be found at A medical drone for the NT: Challenges and opportunities, and Chief Remote Drone Pilot takes health project to new heights.
  • Improving roundabout modelling using drone video analytics

– development of evidence-based parameter estimation methods to improve Main Roads Western Australia’s roundabout modelling practice and operational guidelines by accounting for various local conditions such as geometry, topography, location type (residential, industrial, rural etc.), traffic mix, and seasonality, as well as driving behaviour

Additionally, as part of our Industry PhD program are the following projects:

• Hybrid drone/truck last mile delivery planning for e-groceries
• An empirical analysis of drone ecosystems in 4PL logistics
• Fixed-wing drones and small package delivery

More drone activity

As stated in the webinar, iMOVE is keen to do some more work in this area, so if you have an idea for a project, or you have a question to ask about anything in the video, then we encourage you to get in touch with iMOVE!

Webinar video

Click the play button below to catch up on what was discussed by the panel on this important transport topic. The video runs for a touch under one hour.

Q&A

As you’ll hear in the webinar video, we ran out of time before we could answer all the questions that were asked in the webinar chat. Dr Wiedermann has been kind enough to answer the unanswered chat questions.

How are UAV(drone) flights being regulated when flying over the public(events, workplace, shark spotting, etc., etc.?

Short answer: distance of minimum of 30 metres to any other person but complex regulation (CASR Part 101); also commercial licence for pilot required plus operator licence.

We have shown the public concerns around drone use in Australia in previous work but have also then shown how to internalise those external effects. Your slides suggest that you focused on regulation. Why not pricing or setting incentives to maximise economic benefits?

Our work did not look at that aspect per se. Regulation and ‘getting regulation right’ was a theme repeatedly addressed by the experts.

Do you think the current ecosystem in Australia has enough players to meet growth opportunities/market demand or do you think we need more domestic and international investment?

More investment is needed to build a whole Australian ecosystem and also to train more remote pilots. We can usefully leverage the experience of sectors that are at par or leading internationally across sectors but similarly we should seek to learn from and identify leading areas internationally where Australia is lagging.

Did you have a preconceived industry percentage of the interviewees? And then went on asking questions? How did you select the interviewees?

The types of industries were defined through the literature review study and our selection of potential interviewees was guided by our decision to conduct a Delphi method and our definition of “experts.” For a more detailed explanation, please refer to Section D of the report.

What does the panel think of Effective Anti-Drone Measures?

Matters of defence were out of scope of this study.

What is more popular in Australia – vertical take off-like hexagon-propelled drones or horizontal take off with spring pull?

VTOL to our knowledge.

How does air traffic control come into play for small drones?

Air traffic management for the airspace that will increasingly be occupied by drones is looked at but was out of scope for this study.

Does it make sense to establish drone corridors in the same way we manage heavy traffic (highways) or general traffic (main arterial roads) on the ground? This may perhaps also help with public acceptance.

This is one approach that is discussed in industry. It could be a starting point until other challenges around air traffic management are solved but it would also partly offset the advantages drones have over other transport options.

Did you have any research on the use of AI in the drone space? And how are safety and security space looked at?

Those were out of scope for this study.