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/