LAKELAND – As drone technology continues to change the way industries across Canada operate, AERIUM Analytics is laying the groundwork for “skyways” in northeastern Alberta.
Funded through a $90,000 Small Community Opportunity Program grant from the province of Alberta and accessed through Alberta HUB, the project is exploring what AERIUM Analytics Director Dan Juhlin calls a “middle mile drone delivery ecosystem.”
According to Juhlin, for the past decade drone delivery programs in North America have been shut down within 18 to 24 months because of complaints from the public about drone noise and numbers, but those programs were focused on last mile delivery, from the regional hub to your door.
“We’re not talking pizza and beer right to your door. We’re talking 100 kilos of Amazon packages taking off from the Amazon warehouse and landing at a vertiport in Vermilion for example,” said Juhlin.
When roads are built, they’re designed for particular loads and destinations, and that information is used by trucking and logistics companies to deliver the goods needed by industry and consumers. What Juhlin envisions are designated routes in the sky which would be used by electrical or hydrogen-powered drones to deliver goods without the operator needing to maintain a direct line of sight.
“It’s time to move the conversation from how are we keeping drones out of the way of real aircraft, and generating the conversation of, how do we work together to enable a safe flying environment for everybody?” said Juhlin.
“Part of that for us is if we have these defined skyways, and everyone knows that drone is flying at 400 feet in the skyways. The air tractors can stay out of the skyways. The helicopters could fly under or over the skyways. And as long as they're defined and everyone knows where they are, we should be able to maintain a reasonable amount of safety,” said Juhlin, before pulling up a map of the proposed Skyways to illustrate his point.
The map shows 11 airport hub locations throughout northeast Alberta, all roughly 100 kilometres apart. With the click of a button, the map changes to show all the restricted areas they don’t want the skyway routes to cross directly over – First Nations communities, homes, provincial parks, farms.
“Those corridors have been designed specifically in a way to minimize objection from the public,” said Juhlin.
The first ‘Night Test Flight’ will go from the Village of Andrew to the Town of St. Paul Municipal Airport on the evening of Sept. 24.
More opportunities
There’s more opportunity than just the proposed the skyway routes, according to Bob Bezpalko, the executive director of Alberta HUB.
“We’re determining those primary routes that these drones can fly . . . But then we have the opportunity for a company to come and manufacture drones,” said Bezpalko, noting northeast Alberta has the unique combination of Boreal forest, parkland, and prairie as well as temperatures from -40C in the winter to +40C in the summer.
“So, if you're looking to establish drone manufacturing, the development of technology, the Northeast region, the Alberta HUB region, is perfect for that,” said Bezpalko.
Bezpalko said as regulations around drones develop, there’s also opportunity for agriculture to use them to spray fields and for oilfield companies to use them for monitoring.
“Drones can take away that dull, dangerous, dirty work from human beings,” said Bezpalko.
Mapping exercise
As part of the project, AERIUM did a mapping exercise to identify every farm in the Alberta HUB region and put a half a kilometre buffer around it and chose to stop routes three kilometres outside of any community, so communities can make a decision to connect to the network or not.
“And then we picked the routes avoiding all of those buffered areas. So, the drones are flying over people’s land, but they’re not flying anywhere near people’s houses,” said Juhlin, noting that with the 500-metre buffer, people shouldn’t hear the drones flying.
Asked about potential impacts to birds like the Canada Geese and Snow Geese which migrate south in the fall and north again in the spring, Juhlin said geese aren’t scared by much.
“It’s actually the greater raptors, they get really pissed off and territorial. But they won’t attack anything that’s the bigger than them. So, because we’re dealing with drones that are getting closer to the size of a Cessna, we’re not really concerned about birds.”
AERIUM will be using a mapping drone with a wingspan of approximately eight feet for the initial flights, which will make sure their proposed routes make sense and that there haven’t been any major changes to the topography, like new cell phone towers or a grain processing facility.
“And we’re hoping to attract companies who are already doing BVLOS [Beyond Visual Line of Sight] or BVLOS trials to use these skyways for their trials so we can prove out these routes in the most cost-effective manner for our membership,” said Juhlin.
