Drones Taking Off in Louisiana Despite Murky Laws

(Source: wwltv.com)  

Drones have now moved from the battlefield overseas to the farmers field in Louisiana.

Louisiana State University researchers are conducting test flights to determine how the unmanned aerial vehicles can be used to help monitor crops for potential problems.

“Potentially, these things could do millions or billions of dollars of good to the AG industry, by reducing some of these losses that we have and more effectively managing use of chemicals and the crops themselves,” LSU Associate Professor Steve Hall said. “The ability to fly these multiple times in a week and take even visual images or processed images, images that are multi-spectral or hyper-spectral, but never the less images that can pinpoint something before it gets out of hand. That’s something these can do.”

Hall leads the team looking at agricultural and environmental applications for drones. He said south Louisiana sugarcane fields could certainly benefit from the bird’s eye view they provide.

“It gets really hard to get into a sugarcane field. The stuff grows 12 feet tall. It gets thick. Being able to fly over and capture some information can be very, very helpful. It’s about a billion dollar industry in Louisiana.”

Drones are also soaring to new heights in the land of Hollywood South.

Filmmakers Paul Charbonnet and Charles Malveaux started the Baton Rouge-based Atmosphere Aerial. They’ve used their growing number of camera-equipped drones for both motion picture and commercial production.

“Just as a videographer and a filmmaker, it’s just the next step of being un-reined, un-tethered creativity and freedom with your camera and your camera shots,” Charbonnet said. “The drone is basically a jib without limits to where everything that a boom can do and swing around, I can exactly mimic, but then take it to 100 feet.”

Malveaux is not just a drone pilot. He is also an inventor and innovator in the field of unmanned aircraft.

He said drones can fly closer to buildings and actors than other methods of aerial photography.

“You can get that birds eye view a lot quicker than you ever could before,” Malveaux said. “You don’t have to bring in cranes. You don’t need ladders. You don’t need big trucks. With this, we have a very small, lightweight system, you know that only weighs about 4 pounds.”

The FAA estimates that roughly 7,500 drones may be in commercial use by 2018.

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