RIT is working with a local company to expand research on drones. The university is utilizing a special way of testing those unmanned aerial devices.
RIT and the aerial imaging company Pictometry are partnering to build an outdoor enclosure that includes netting to keep the drones they will be testing from getting too far away.
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Agamemnon Crassidis says that's crucial, since RIT is close enough to the Rochester Airport that they would need the FAA to certify them in order to be able to test the drones outdoors, and that paperwork can take a while to get through the system.
He says that's important, because in order to do research that involves the navigation used on drones, they really need to be outdoors.
“This netted enclosure will allow us to pick up GPS outdoors and also avoid any special certifications that’s required to fly drones outdoors.”
Crassidis says students at RIT also benefit because it's believed that drones will eventually provide a major boost to the U.S. economy.
“We could look at it for monitoring gas lines, for bridge inspections; in terms of commercial applications, there’s hundreds of these types of applications and instead of going out and testing it out where you get a special certification which requires months and months to do, we can do the testing all inside this netted enclosure.”
This outdoor drone enclosure at RIT is one of the first installed at a northeast university.
It's part of an expanded research partnership between RIT and Pictometry to advance the development and testing of unmanned aircraft technologies.
