Eyes in the sky
A
What drones are allowed to see in Texas
small yellow container rides
briskly down a conveyor belt
before being lifted effortlessly into the sky by a small
eight-bladed mini-copter. The diminutive
octocopter flies smoothly across a blue
sky and over green fields before landing
gracefully on the back porch of a suburban home, releasing the package and
drifting back into the sky. A father and
his young son run expectantly out the
back door of their home and pick up the
container, eager to unpack the purchase
they made less than 30 minutes before
on their tablet.
While this may be Amazon’s vision of
the future for package delivery, a vast field
of government use (law enforcement,
military, firefighting, search and rescue)
and commercial use (mapping, surveying,
inspecting) for drones is exploding. A
report from the American Civil Liberties
Union calls 2013 the “year of the drone.”
This rapid growth has left regulators
and lawmakers from around the country
scrambling to address the challenges delivered by this new technology.
As one might expect, the Federal
Aviation Administration has claimed
regulatory authority over drone flight,
and Congress ordered the FAA to develop a comprehensive plan to integrate
unmanned aircraft such as drones into
the National Airspace System by 2015.
AIRCRAFT, from page 4
even small unmanned aircraft,
pointing specifically to a
close call in March involving
a drone and a commercial
airliner that could have had
“catastrophic” results.
Subbarao’s work in UAVs
includes Quadrotor UAV,
dynamic modeling, flight
control and autopilot control
structures.
Subbarao’s work will focus
6
Research Texas
industry
opinion
Scott Fredricks
However, the FAA is focused principally on the safety and security of drones
and the airspace itself and not on the
issue that concerns most members of
the public who imagine camera-equipped
drones skirting over their backyards –
privacy. On this subject, state legislators
have gone into action. In 2013, 43 states
considered bills related to domestic
drones, with laws in eight states going
into effect in 2013 and in three more
states in 2014. Clearly, state lawmakers
are responding to public anxiety over the
privacy issues that drone flights present.
The Texas Privacy Act took effect
Sept. 1, 2013, and set ground rules for
the lawful (and unlawful) capture of
images by drones in this state. Though
titled the “Privacy Act,” the statute actually reads more like a permission slip, detailing 19 broad categories of activity for
which drones are permitted to capture
images, including:
• anything with the consent of the
individual who owns or lawfully occupies
the real property captured in the image
on position determination of
UAVs using sensors, tracking
them for conflict prediction
and collision avoidance. He
also will help develop systems
to use existing cellular infrastructure and the Internet to
provide locations of UAVs,
especially in non-GPS areas.
Dogan will work on wind
field construction for trajectory prediction and conflict
avoidance, obstacle detection
and avoidance, impact of
Spring 2014
(Tex. Gov’t Code 423.002(a)(6));
• public real property or a person
on that property (Tex. Gov’t Code
423.002(a)(16));
• anything in connection with oil pipeline safety (Tex. Gov’t Code 423.002(a)
(18)) or an electric or natural gas utility
inspecting its facilities (Tex. Gov’t Code
423.002(a)(5)).
Any use that does not fall within one
of these or the other 15 exceptions in the
statute can be prosecuted as a criminal
misdemeanor and the owner or tenant
of the property photographed can seek
civil penalties of $5,000 per episode or
$10,000 per episode if the images were disclosed, displayed or distributed to others.
However, an operator can escape criminal
prosecution if he destroys the image as
soon as he has knowledge that the image
was captured in violation of the statute.
Given that the statue expressly permits
so many uses, and that the penalties are
easily avoided, it is likely that drones
will become an increasingly popular
commercial tool in Texas once the FAA
creates the regulatory framework for the
unmanned aircraft to take flight.
So, keep your eyes on the sky and
smile for the camera that may soon be
flying overhead.
Scott Fredricks is a partner in the Intellectual
Property Practice Group at Cantey Hanger LLP. He
can be contacted via email at sfredricks@cantey-
trailing wake vortex and turbulence on UAS operations
and control, predicting hybrid
airspace interactions where
unmanned and manned aircraft coexist.
Dogan and Huff will work
on algorithm developments
based on probabilistic approaches for obstacle detection and avoidance as well as
autom