Over the remote fields in the African nation of Rwanda flies a small aircraft with red wings towards the Kabgayi Hospital, one of the main hospitals in the Southern region. Its mission is to deliver blood products to the hospital from the national blood banks for emergency transfusions, surgeries, and maternal care.
Compared to cruising at 100 kilometres per hour for 160 kilometres in a straight line, delivering them through land transit can easily cost more time and lives, especially in a country with poorly maintained roads. The aircraft tirelessly conducts about 20-30 such missions in a day. Surely, the heroic pilot deserves a medal of gallant. Except, there is no pilot.
The aircraft uses computer algorithms to calculate its propeller speed to correct course and speed adjustments mid-air, without even the help of a remote operator. It uses the Global Positioning System (GPS), and some onboard sensors (somewhat similar to the ones in smartphones that help you navigate with map applications) to calculate the adjustments mid-air.
Once it reaches the destination hospital, it drops off the supplies wrapped in sturdy packaging attached to a small parachute or carefully lowers them onto a marked location on the ground without landing. Finally, it heads back to the depot where it will be sent off to a new destination.
Today, over 75 percent of the medical supplies such as blood and vaccinations, outside the Rwandan capital are delivered by drones. In Ghana, another African nation, over 1 million drone-based medical deliveries have been conducted since 2019. This reveals the astonishing logistic network automation that has taken place in Africa.
Behind this transformation is an American logistics company “Zipline” which developed the drone platform and the software. Following its success in the proving grounds of Africa, Zipline is expanding its operations to cater to the world’s largest consumer market, the United States. The potential of drones is not limited to pure entertainment value, or photography that most of us are accustomed to seeing in Sri Lanka.
The love story between Rwanda and Zipline is a culmination of deeply harmonised relationships among robotics researchers, regulatory agencies, federally funded institutions, and universities in the United States. As a result, many drone-based startups are blooming in the country, and also in Europe. Most are funded through agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the European Research Council (ERC), and private donors.
Some startups focus on drone applications such as logistics, surveillance, and military, while others consider supplementing them indirectly, i.e., designing efficient propellers powertrains, and flight scheduling softwares. This drone-based transportation revolution has been coined by NASA as “Urban Air Mobility (UAM)”. Broadly, it involves using drones to transport cargo and passengers in urban areas over short distances ranging between 15 to 20 kilometres.
Translated to Sri Lankan terms, if implemented, it can significantly reduce the time to deliver a package from Kottawa to Pettah, simultaneously reducing the number of vehicles entering the city.
Market status
The drone industry and academia have converged to a promising turning point. The global drone market is valued at $ 25.3 billion, mainly backed by demand from the entertainment, agriculture, defence, surveillance, and construction industries. USD Analytics, a global research and consulting company, conservatively predicts that this will rise to $ 65 billion at an annual rate of 12.5 percent by 2030 thanks to the UAM concept.
Today, over 300 companies have registered in the United States that are involved in drone delivery operations. These include prominent companies such as Amazon Prime Air, UPS Flight Forward, and Wing —a sister company of Google, focusing on integrating drone delivery into logistics networks.
DJI, the famous Chinese drone manufacturer is currently enjoying the largest market share in the industry, thriving in the United States, the largest consumer market for drones. However, it faces increasing restrictions from the United States aggravated by the US-China trade war.
India has a nascent industry that is eyeing to fill this void by 2030 with domestic players such as Ideaforge supported by government subsidies. Even more interestingly, India currently boasts the fastest-growing drone market suggesting that there is a promising future for drone-based startups in the region.
What about the academia?
The literature one must master to design a task-specialised drone has come to a mature point, essentially lowering the barrier to entry. Mostly thanks to the readily available stable softwares that encompass the drone-related computer algorithms.
Those open-sourced tools such as trajectory computing, and control algorithms are very robust —still serving as the de-facto benchmark for more modern deep learning-based algorithms. They can easily carry out a mission-critical task, such as mapping, land or ocean surveillance. Those softwares are also free to download, customise and redeploy without requiring a licensing fee.
From a hardware perspective, they are compatible with almost all off-the-shelf control boards and autopilots requiring minimal to no tuning.
Considering the time that it takes to revamp the legal infrastructure, design new regulations, and a curriculum to master the technology, I would argue that now is the time for Sri Lanka to begin to invest in the local drone industry. We witnessed the failure of initial efforts to promote vehicle assembly in Sri Lanka in the 1960s due to the strong competition and lack of skills.
Here we have an industry with minimal competition, a relatively lower barrier to entry, abundant gaps in the literature, and many applications to cater to. We must grab this window of opportunity before it is too late, and leverage it to realise the dream of a manufacturing-based economy.
Embracing the changes
It is easy to think that in Sri Lanka we are not in a position to ride this rapidly emerging market, perhaps, with good reasons. It is hard enough to get permission from the authorities even to fly a drone for leisure, let alone for a business.
However, here is the catch: it did not happen overnight in the United States either. The concept of UAM is a joint effort of many stakeholders: federal agencies such as NASA, regulatory bodies such as the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), private investors, and universities. Establishing transparent policies, and candid discourse among these bodies will be the first step towards enabling a drone-based innovation.
One case example is the regulatory obligations for noise pollution paving the way for a patented propeller design. Typically, heavier drones carrying a payload make much louder noise than their smaller counterparts as they must generate more thrust. However, this unpleasant racket in neighbourhoods disrupts family lives, impacts people with sensitive hearing, and scares off children and pets. This prompted the need to design silent propellers (in contrast to abruptly discarding the whole UAM proposal). Federal grants were given for this purpose to the universities.
One ambitious graduate student and their advisor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) undertook efforts to study sound wave properties generated by conventional propellers and counteracting them. Their efforts resulted in multiple journal publications, a Ph. D thesis and eventually a patent for a novel aircraft propeller design (Patent: US10836466B2).
In parallel, Zipline invented another propeller design for their drones. The FAA has taken a notably progressive stance on the UAM concept, despite facing numerous issues related to their infrastructure. Instead of outright rejecting the UAM proposal, which could introduce tens of thousands of small-scale drones into low-altitude airspace further straining the air traffic control (ATC) system, the FAA has proposed that UAM drones must be equipped with onboard intelligent capabilities to avoid collisions.
In a similar manner, we must engage in an open discourse with regulatory agencies such as the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) advocating for innovation. Continuing with the ancient policies on drones will cost us severe economic, and scientific contributions, and an opportunity to transform the urban transportation sector, something that is already severely impacted by increasing congestion and urbanisation.
We have long adopted a policy that is hostile toward drones. While such policies may have suited for a period of war, the time has come for us to take a more progressive stance. Let us be honest; the regulations on drones in Sri Lanka have been designed to discourage anyone from obtaining one for security purposes, and a little has been changed to empower researchers, hobbyists, or entrepreneurs since the war ended. According to the CAA, even today, one must obtain a security clearance from the Ministry of Defence, a “spectrum clearance”, from the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), and an import-control licence for importing a drone.
Interestingly, these rules do not apply to foreigners who bring drones from abroad with them. If possessing a drone is a taboo for the locals because it poses a national security threat, would not that risk be multitudes higher if the owner is a foreign national? The aim of this article is to initiate a discourse on potential changes to the drone-related infrastructure so that we can benefit from this rapidly emerging, easily accessible market to boost the country’s economic growth while ensuring our security interests.
A recent study paper from the Ministry of Defence goes as far as to recommend, “Importing and manufacturing commercial drones should be strictly regulated at the highest level and no one should be allowed to bring or manufacture UAVs/ commercial drones without the proper licence.”.
Unifying drone-based ecosystem
This is nothing but extremely frustrating for both entrepreneurs and researchers. While issuing licences to fly certain types of drones is necessary, imposing strict regulations at the point of origin seems excessive, especially considering that countries such as the United States and India practise a more welcoming approach. That too with much more advanced adversaries. The Sri Lankan law also prohibits a drone from suspending a payload without obtaining prior permission from the CAA, essentially rendering conducting any drone logistics research freely as an illegal activity.
This article is not intended to serve as a blueprint for drafting a unifying framework. However, it is my honest opinion that such a resolution must account for the following. 1) The legal framework should be relaxed by making it easier for one to build or import a drone as long as they follow a set of vehicle-and sensory-specific constraints, i.e., what is the allowed maximum weight, battery power, and payload capacity? What sensors are allowed for commercial, personal, or research use cases, i.e., LiDARs, thermal cameras, etc.? 2) Publicly announcing the controlled and the uncontrolled aerospace demarcations, along with any additional location-specific and temporary security constraints.
These maps should be readily available to the operators so they can easily differentiate the area they are allowed to fly. 3) Government funding, tax reliefs, and grants must be offered to university researchers and private entities based on merit and proposed contributions to the literature, and towards the country’s economic and security interests.
Increased challenges
If these suggestions are not addressed promptly, drone researchers and entrepreneurs in the country will face increased challenges. It will further hamper the public’s rights to access the latest technologies and eventually leave the country lagging even behind the rest of the world. Implementing these changes swiftly will allow local entrepreneurs to take advantage of entering a promising market earlier with a significant economic promise. On the other hand, given the privacy and security concerns many countries have faced recently by giving unrestricted access to foreign players, it is also preferable to invest in a domestic industry organically at the earliest from a national security perspective. If we act now, a drone that can deliver emergency medical supplies to a remote hospital hundreds of kilometres away, saving countless lives, can become a reality within a few years, but not a distant dream.
“Drone Market Demand and Growth Insights 2024.” Usdanalytics.com, 2024, www.usdanalytics.com/ industry-reports/drone. Accessed 5 Aug. 2024. MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Toroidal Propeller. 2023. BMDA Beddewela. “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles as an Asymmetric Threat: Regional Security Perspective.” Defence.lk, 2024, www.defence.lk/Publication/viewpdffile/1594.
The writer is Visiting Lecturer, Researcher in Machine Learning and Robotics, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA.
