Jan 23 2018
GreenSight Agronomics, a drone services and agricultural intelligence provider, has secured a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate its drone system beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS).
BVLOS operations allows GreenSight to control its drone systems stationed anywhere in the world remotely from its Boston command center. While this waiver still requires a local visual observer, it is an important first step toward unattended operations.
"GreenSight already provides our golf course and agricultural customers insight into their water and chemical needs allowing them to make better management decisions," said GreenSight CEO, James Peverill. "This waiver is a first step in reducing the overhead of obtaining this information from our drones, letting our customers focus on their properties."
GreenSight is the ninth company to obtain a BVLOS waiver from the FAA and will use the waiver to begin testing BVLOS operations at a customer site. The FAA reviewed the application and supporting documentation to ensure compliance with the CFR 107.200 regulations. GreenSight outlined the risks and mitigation associated with the operations and was granted the waiver Dec. 15th, 2017. GreenSight's proprietary drone system has racked up impressive reliability numbers, with over 500 hours in the air with no incidents.
In limited release for 2017, GreenSight captured over 100,000 acres of imagery at customer locations in the US, Canada and Europe. "Our customers have been very open to obtaining FAA remote pilot certificates to operate our systems on their properties, but as we expand operations in 2018 we continue to execute our development roadmap towards fully unattended operations," Peverill added.