(tranquil music)
- [Narrator] Many of us know the feeling
of being sick but still having to leave home
to buy medicine,
or the chore of bundling the family into the car
for a trip to buy forgotten dinner ingredients.
This is even more challenging
when the closest shops aren't just a few blocks away
but in the next town
or where leaving home just isn't an option.
This is where remotely piloted aircraft,
commonly known as drones or RPAS
are already being used to quickly deliver goods
and parcels to Australians.
And their use is only gonna grow.
- Wing is offering a drone delivery service here
in Australia for a number of years.
Every single week, we deliver thousands of packages
to people in Canberra and in southeast Queensland,
items ranging from over-the-counter medication
to hot prepared food, groceries, hardware items.
And we have a delivery taking place almost every 30 seconds
across a number of different facilities.
- We founded Swoop Aero in 2017
after we got asked the question around whether a drone
could be used to move chemotherapy medication
in the Australian Outback.
We knew straightaway the answer was yes.
The technology could fly far enough
and carry the right weight
and all that kind of stuff,
but we thought the real question
was what would the system look like that can do that?
Fly 1,000 times a week in a safe and scalable way.
- [Narrator] For drone deliveries to operate at scale,
it's important that there's a level of social acceptance
and appetite for this technology,
and with that acceptance comes an expectation
that the technology is safe
and communities feel assured
that a regulator is keeping industry accountable.
- It's important for the community
to understand there is a regulator like CASA
that oversees safety.
So people, when they look in the sky and see a drone,
they know there's a safety regulator
that has accounted for that drone operating,
that the city is aware of it, things like that as well.
- Being able to work with an aviation regulator like CASA
is really, really important
because people trust the aviation regulators.
And so I know that when we're talking
to the Malawian communities
or the DR Congolese communities,
or the Mozambican communities,
being able to say we do this in Australia
and we've been approved by CASA
to do these same type of operations is very powerful.
- [Narrator] Automation will be a key factor driving
how these drones will be used,
which for industry will increase scale,
reduce overheads and bring down prices for consumers.
- We see automation as an absolutely critical piece
to the puzzle, particularly in UAS,
as well as in advanced air mobility
but being clear going beyond automation,
and going to autonomy.
And that autonomous piece
where we will have an augmented environment
will be critical from a safety point of view as well.
- [Narrator] Australia is a good location
for the development and trial of these technologies
but it is crucial that operations
are conducted with a high level of safety.
- At Wing, we've had the pleasure
of working with CASA for a number of years
to make the safety case that enables us
to operate in the Australian skies.
And that work was world leading.
And now other countries are looking to CASA's work
that was done with Wing here in Australia
to inform decisions being made about drone safety
and drone delivery in other jurisdictions.
- So this is known as outcomes-based regulation,
and what that basically means
is that CASA doesn't prescribe exactly the things
that an operator needs to do
in order to safely conduct an operation
in a given setting.
Instead, the onus is on the operator
to show to CASA how they'll safely do that
to manage the risks that have been identified.
And this approach is really flexible,
and it allows operators who are wanting
to do new or innovative things
to come to CASA and demonstrate to us
how they can do those safely
without necessarily having to follow a prescriptive list
of particular controls or procedures
that might not actually make sense
in the context of the operation that they're looking to do.
- CASA has really demonstrated global leadership
in this space.
They have a very high bar for safety,
which is important for a company like ours
as we're one of the first companies doing work like this.
So going to a country
and working with the safety regulator
that had a high bar for safety was very important.
But in conjunction with that high bar for safety,
CASA always also took a forward-thinking
and a forward-leaning approach
to how they would assess this.
(lively music)
- [Narrator] Find out more on our website.