ANSI Pilots Drone Standards Guide

One of the world’s top standardization groups wants to establish a common benchmark for the drone industry.

Last week, the American National Standards Institute released a working draft titled the Standardization Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Version 2.0). The brainchild of the institute’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Standardization Collaborative, the document focuses on drone use in civil, commercial, and public safety applications. The collaborative includes members from drone companies like PrecisionHawk and DJI, as well as government agencies like the U.S. DOT and the Las Vegas Police Department.

“The roadmap identifies existing standards and standards in development, defines where gaps exist and recommends additional work that is needed, including a timeline for its completion and organizations that can perform the work,” an ANSI press release notes.

The draft roadmap and related materials may be downloaded as follows:

• Working Draft Standardization Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems V2
• Comment Form
• Instructions for Using Comment Form

Comments on the draft roadmap must be submitted by May 1.

“The UASSC has continued to make considerable progress over the past year to identify the standards needed to support the increasing use of UAS for civil, commercial, and public safety operations,” said ANSI president and CEO S. Joe Bhatia. “At this time, we are inviting comments from the broad community of stakeholders to inform the further development of the document.”

“Ultimately, the document is meant to help clarify the current standardization landscape, minimize duplication of effort among standards development organizations (SDOs), help inform standards participation, and facilitate the growth of the UAS market. The UASSC itself is not developing standards.”

The document will address issues such as airworthiness, flight operations, personnel training, qualifications and certification, infrastructure inspections, environmental applications, commercial services, workplace safety and public-safety operations.

Specific goals for Version 2 include expanding the content to include topics such as spectrum, urban air mobility, and recreational operations; engaging subject matter experts not previously involved; identifying potentially overlooked gaps; tracking progress by standards developers to address the roadmap’s recommendations; reviewing priorities; and otherwise incorporating feedback.