Significant upside in unmanned flight DEK:

Unmanned aircraft go up, some costs fall; step by step by inch, regulatory hurdles fall as uses for aerial workhorses proliferate

Steve Sutherlin

Petroleum News

Dr. Catherine F. Cahill, director of the Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has a drone to pick regarding terminology.

“I’m talking about unmanned aircraft you guys,” she said in remarks to the Alaska Oil and Gas Association conference in Anchorage May 30, “You all call them drones ... we have lost the battle.”

The center is, however, serious about the advantages unmanned aircraft can bring to Alaska and its oil and gas industry.

“We are the lead for the entire system of the University of Alaska for this particular technology,” she said. “We’ve been doing this since 2001, so we actually are some of the granddaddies of the field and we do a wide variety of missions - anything from helping the FAA to integrate the unmanned aircraft into the air space to helping with wildlife surveys, marine mammal surveys, mapping - you name it, we’ve probably done it.”

Unmanned aircraft are safer, repeatable and environmentally friendly, at a substantial fuel savings over a helicopter, she said, adding that “terabytes per day” of quality data can be gathered by unmanned craft.

Unmanned aircraft “can be less expensive to operate, but right now with the regulatory situation it’s not there yet,” Cahill said. “For short distances and line of sight, often it is less expensive - also we can potentially fly where aircraft may not be able to fly.”

The program includes much more than just flying aircraft, Cahill said.

“Only when you put a payload on it is it worth something,” she said. “We need to have payloads; we need to be able to adapt them; we need to be able to talk to the payloads; we need to be able to talk to the aircraft - command and control; we need to have a team that can effectively put this to use for missions of value.”

The center has a diverse fleet with a diverse set of missions.

“We have quite a fleet so we’ve been practicing,” Cahill said. “We do everything from the little tiny ones for the school outreach, getting kids excited about flying technology and engineering ... thinking about careers in this field, to one that happens to have a 16-foot wingspan.

“We can do pipeline surveillance; we can look for cracks; we can look for leaks; we can look for someone approaching the pipeline when they shouldn’t,” she said. “We can do cargo delivery, medical supplies - if there happens to be an emergency, repair supplies, mammal surveys, the list is endless in terms of potential here but the key is we have do it safely. We want to make sure that whatever we do, it does not conflict with manned aviation, and guarantee that we hold to the highest safety standards.

“We can do a lot of pilot programs,” she said. “We did some of the initial flare stack inspections, way back when, with ENI.”

Regulatory test of patience

“We are working on FAA regulations; we’re flying beyond the line of sight, what a big win for Alaska,” she said. “We need to be able to do ... monitoring 24/7, 365 days a year - beyond the line of sight of the operator.

“The FAA is having trouble with this. and we’re pushing them hard,” Cahill said. “Hopefully, the rules will evolve and eventually instead of putting people in helicopters at risk we can use unmanned aircraft.”

The upside is apparent, but implementation comes slowly.

“The main challenge is the FAA,” Cahill said. “We are working very hard to work with the FAA to advance the rules and regulations for space integration, especially here in Alaska.”

The major concern is the smooth interaction of unmanned operations with general aviation.

“General aviation loves to fly where we want to be - that’s under 500 feet, so a lot of challenges making sure that we are not going to interfere with general aviation that doesn’t have transponders,” she said. “If people are going to have an accident it’s not going to be your trained operator, it’s going to be an unlicensed user probably first.

“Fast forward, we are working with the FAA to develop what’s called detect and avoid, our sense-and-avoid technology,” she said. “If you lose contact with the aircraft, the aircraft will spot other aircraft in the air, and avoid. We’re doing the cutting edge here in Alaska.

“We are working towards an Alaskan solution and we have had priority given to us by FAA,” she said.

“We are making strides in being able to operate with 11 miles between the aircraft and the operator - that is more space than the FAA is giving anybody, so step by step.”

“They seem to think that doing a Popsicle delivery is sufficient, we want to be able to use it to do tools for several hundred miles,” she said. “We keep pushing; we are working on getting a commercial air carrier certificate.”

Practical missions underway

The center flies the Sea Hunter, a 325-pound 16-foot wingspan unmanned aircraft.

“We are doing meteorological measurements and sea ice measurements off the coast, helping prove that we can work in and out of working airports,” Cahill said, adding that ConocoPhillips supported the mission.

The center is also partnering with Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. to test the use of unmanned aircraft for the surveillance of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

And, building on work done previously, the center is working with BP to develop a new ultralight methane detection system.

“We took a 14-kilogram spectrometer down to 1 kilogram and flew it with a small helicopter ... to do leak detection remotely beyond the line of sight,” Cahill said. “Exciting stuff.”

BP says such new technology is sweetening its bottom line already.

“We’re ushering in and using a lot more technology, whether it’s drones or big data or virtual reality and digitization of our facilities,” Janet Weiss, president of BP Exploration (Alaska) told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance’s Meet Alaska conference on Jan. 18. “We’re seeing costs come down through technology.”

BP is executing its inspections more safely and efficiently with unmanned aircraft, Randy Sulte, BP program execution manager, told the Resource Development Council’s 2018 annual conference in November.

After spring flooding and subsequent road damage on the North Slope, an unmanned aircraft captured high quality images for appraising the situation. An overflight in conventional aircraft was not immediately possible because of low clouds.