In the Carolinas, State Farm is in the air. The insurance company has obtained an FAA waiver to conduct beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) flights for disaster damage assessment flights using senseFly eBee fixed-wing drones to capture high-resolution imagery. The aircraft has a range of 4.6 miles and can be pre-programmed for autonomous flight.
Since May 2018, State Farm has collaborated with the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership (MAAP) and Virginia Tech’s injury biomechanics group to collect data used to assess risks and develop reduction strategies for BVLOS flights. The data convinced the FAA to grant State Farm the BVLOS waiver to enable it to conduct aerial damage-assessment operations in the wake of Hurricane Florence.
State Farm said the FAA waiver reflects months of detailed research following a process pioneered by MAAP for identifying, evaluating, and mitigating potential risks presented by drone operations. MAAP is one of 10 projects selected to participate in the FAA Integration Pilot Program (IPP) tasked with gathering data to evaluate drone safety in commercial operations. Through its collaboration with MAPP, State Farm was the only insurance company selected to participate in the program.
“This is a pivotal moment that demonstrates the value of a risk-based safety case development process,” said MAAP director Mark Blanks. “Drone technology has tremendous potential to serve the public, but before we can harness that capability we need to demonstrate conclusively that ambitious operations can be done safely. This waiver, and the volume of research that backs it up, shows that this approach works.”