Drone News: Air 3 & Mini 4 DOC, Percepto Drone Swarm Waiver, Defibrillator Drones, and Texas Zoning

Welcome to your weekly news update, we have 4 stories for you
this week, Air 3 and Mini 4 Pro finally added to DOC list,
Percepto gets drone swarm waiver, defibrillator drones are faster
than ambulances, and the City of Plano is looking at zoning for
AAM and UAS.


First up this week is the Air 3 and the Mini 4 Pro, which have
finally been added to the remote ID DOC list! This means you no
longer need any RID modules for the Air 3 and Mini 4 pro IF you
had one you were using. If you’ve been waiting for the Air 3 and
Mini 4 to be approved before purchasing, now’s the time! Here’s
hoping the FAA and DJI are more efficient about getting these
drones approved when the drone comes out! Next up this week is
Percepto, who has received a waiver allowing them to operate up
to 30 drones with a single operator, beyond visual line of sight.
The waiver is designed for drone-in-a-box systems to be used to
inspect infrastructure and pipelines. Currently, the waiver
doesn’t appear on the Part 107 Waivers issued so we can’t see the
specifics of the waiver, but this is a pretty cool development
allowing what many would consider the holy-grail of drone
waivers. We’ll keep you update if we see any updates on this
waiver! Third up this week is a study out of Sweden, which tested
55 drones over 11 months responding to cardiac emergencies. Over
the 11 month study, drones responded to 72 emergencies, of those
55 delivered the AED. The study found that drones had a quicker
response time from dispatch to arrival, with drones arriving
first 37 out of 55 times, and 2 cases of shocks being delivered
prior to the ambulance arriving. Super interesting study, we’ll
have to see if drones are the next thing used by emergency
services to deliver supplies such as AEDs! Last up this week is
the City of Plano, which is looking at changing particular zoning
rules that will affect AAM and UAS operations. This comes in
response to DroneUp operating out of a local Walmart without any
formal permit from the city. There’s no word on what the actual
zoning changes would be or how they would affect AAM or UAS
operations, but another meeting is scheduled for February 26th,
2024. Major John B Muns said during a meeting “ “We had the
opportunity as a council to meet in person to see the operations
in two different areas, one in Frisco and one in Plano,
unfortunately, it was a couple of days before Thanksgiving, so we
had a lozt of us gone,” “We still need some of that information,
so we're respectfully hoping that we can table this item until we
can get some real data that can be analyzed and explained to us…
If we could get that information and come back with a much better
understanding of what you're asking for.” We’ll keep you updated
with what we see out of Plano. That’s it! Have a great weekend!
https://dronexl.co/2023/11/28/plano-city-council-drone-delivery/
https://uasdoc.faa.gov/listDocs
https://dl.djicdn.com/downloads/phantom_4_pro/20231123/Phantom_4_Pro_V2.0_Release_Notes_EN.pdf
https://dronexl.co/2023/11/28/defibrillator-drones-outpace-ambulances/
https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/faa-approves-inspection-drone-swarms/