/** * Custom footer links injection */ function add_custom_footer_links() { echo ''; } add_action('wp_footer', 'add_custom_footer_links'); florida – Born to Drone https://borntodrone.org Aerial photography services Thu, 06 Apr 2023 09:12:06 +0000 en-AU hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.5 Florida enacts bill banning foreign-made drones for emergency services https://borntodrone.org/florida-enacts-bill-banning-foreign-made-drones-for-emergency-services/ Thu, 06 Apr 2023 09:12:06 +0000 https://www.suasnews.com/?p=90849

A bit of an outlier, Florida Senate Bill 44 (2021), is now in force and as such drones made by DJI and Autel are out of bounds for Floridian emergency services.

There is an approved list of companies that Fire, Police and Rescue can use in Florida

  • Skydio
  • Parrot
  • Altavian
  • Teal Drones
  • Vantage Robotics

The list is small with perhaps only Skydio and Parrot having any sort of ecosystem that might be able to be leveraged by software that public services already use. Altavian, Teal and Vantage were very much focused on the Blue sUAS list in development and military use cases.

DJI were very clever early doors in seeding their drones into American emergency service hands and leveraging them for marketing purposes. By extension they then have embedded real users feeding back requirements to DJI and those users then show colleagues how they used the equipment. I can’t fault DJI’s methods. It cannot be denied that Chinese drones have saved American lives.

Major factors in DJI and Autel’s favour were the ability to walk into high street retailers and replace batteries and established service and replacement departments across America.

This will have generated high expectations of the favoured vendors to match and better, I wonder if they are all up to the job.

Source

]]> Florida Department of Management services ban DJI or do they? https://borntodrone.org/florida-department-of-management-services-ban-dji-or-do-they/ Thu, 30 Dec 2021 07:48:34 +0000 https://www.suasnews.com/?p=82765

If you are an official agency in Florida and you do stuff like this-

  • Aerial Inspection or Mapping Data Services
  • Agency Media Relations and Marketing Services
  • Agricultural and Gaming Support Services
  • Emergency Support Services
  • Law Enforcement Support Services

For a short while, yesterday, it looked like Florida was going to only allow you to use Blue sUAS.

The official website has changed overnight, a glitch in the matrix or a glimpse of things to come? This is what it said yesterday.

Pursuant to section 943.50(7)(b), Florida Statutes, the department herby provides the following list of approved manufacturers whose drones may be purchased or otherwise acquired and used by a governmental agency under section 943.50, Florida Statues:

  1. Skydio
  2. Parrot
  3. Altavian
  4. Teal Drones
  5. Vantage Robotics

This list provides approved manufacturers but does not guarantee that all models produced by these manufacturers meet an individual governmental agency’s specific needs or meet relevant security requirements. Beginning, July 1, 2022, all governmental agencies using drones, not on the department’s approved list must submit a comprehensive plan for discontinuing their use to the department.

Why did this notice appear and then disappear from here, I guess we will never know. I have reached out but doubt there will be a response in this holiday period.

I found it interesting that Florida thought that the companies on the list might not meet security requirements, that was the whole point of Blue sUAS! But they might not meet the needs of some departments, that is a valid point. No big LiDAR lifting platforms on the Blue sUAS list for instance.

I have a feeling we are going to see more of this sort of thing in 2022 and that Florida will properly reveal it’s hand.

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