Trevor Wischnewsky is making sure the sky stays organized as food delivery by drone takes off. After hearing that drones were delivering pizza and sushi around his Texas neighborhood, he knew he wanted in. Today he is an RPIC, or remote pilot in command, at Fly Trex. Much like an air traffic controller, an RPIC oversees a new class of aviators who tend to fleets of hexacopter drones that ferry cargo to homes and businesses within a three-mile radius.
Wischnewsky does not pilot the craft himself. Instead, he monitors each delivery from Fly Trex's operations center using inputs from GPS, lasers, and a range of sensors. He also coordinates traffic with a growing swarm of delivery drones over Dallas from competitors such as Zipline, Amazon, and Alphabet's Wing. Fly Trex requires its hires to hold a Federal Aviation Administration drone pilot certificate and complete a weeks-long FAA-approved training course, so that a pilot is ready to take over a drone if needed.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area serves as a testing ground for unmanned aircraft systems traffic management (UTM), a network that lets autonomous drones share their coordinates in real time to avoid collisions, even beyond the pilot's line of sight. Once Wischnewsky confirms a drone is flight-ready, its path is clear, and the weather is good, UTM handles the rest. At his busiest he may have up to 10 drones on his watch at once. "You're there as a safety net," he says. Weather is the most common hazard. On one stressful day, a drone's flight was disrupted by a sudden gust of wind, and he had to intervene to bring it back safely.
Source: MIT Technology Review · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing