Do you have your Part 107 certificate? If you're a drone pilot, the answer had better be yes. But what if you're not a drone pilot? Well, the BVLOS ARC has something to say about that. Their latest report recommends that all new Part 107 certificates include provisions for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operation. If you want to get your Part 107, you need to be prepared to fly your drone beyond your line of sight. Here's what you need to know.

 The BVLOS ARC is a committee of aviation experts formed in 2016 to study the usefulness of drone operations beyond visual line of sight. Their latest report recommends that the FAA include BVLOS provisions in all new Part 107 certificates. This would require all current and future drone pilots to be trained and certified to fly their drones beyond their line of sight.

The BVLOS ARC is recommending this change because they believe it will make drone operations safer and more efficient. Currently, drone pilots are only allowed to fly their drones within their line of sight. Meaning that you need to keep your drone in view at all times, which can be difficult, especially if the drone is flying at a distance.

If pilots were able to fly their drones beyond their line of sight, they would be able to use visual aids, such as First Person View (FPV) goggles, to keep track of the drone. This would make it much easier for pilots to see and avoid obstacles, and it would also allow them to fly the drone for longer periods of time.

The BVLOS ARC's recommendation is just that, a recommendation. It's up to the FAA to decide whether or not to include BVLOS provisions in the Part 107 certificate.

So what would this mean if the FAA made these recommended changes?

This new level of Part 107 certification would require pilots looking to fly beyond line of sight operations to attend online training and then take an online exam to earn a new certificate. This certificate would be an advanced form of Part 107 operations. With this new certificate, the need to have a CFI (Certified Flight Instructor) for beyond line of sight operations would disappear. Which is good news because it's not economically viable to obtain a manned certificate, let alone a CFI certificate.

It's important to remember that these are recommendations and are currently not being enforced by the FAA. If you have any questions about getting your Part 107 or if you would like more information on what a Part 107 license is, you can click here for more info or call and speak to a Lucid Bots rep today.

Sunbelt Rentals has entered into a strategic partnership with Lucid Bots. 

The agreement calls for Sunbelt to make Lucid Bots cleaning drones available to the company’s rental customers nationwide. The two organizations will collaborate on an approved solution program for their clients, and the drones will be backed by Sunbelt’s support and service to maintain the equipment for optimal use.

“Partnerships like the one with Lucid Bots are what has enabled us to bring innovative solutions to our customers,” said Adam Camhi, Sunbelt vice president of flooring solutions. “With the Lucid Bots cleaning drone, our customers will have safer operations, reduce their environmental impact, and increase overall operator efficiency, while still completing tough exterior cleaning jobs.”

About Sunbelt

Fort Mill, South Carolina-based Sunbelt Rentals supplies a wide variety of rentals for the facility services market. For more information, visit www.sunbeltrentals.com.

Drones will fundamentally change the world. Since 2018, the number of drones registered with the FAA in the United States has doubled from 900,000 to 1.8 million and counting. However, very few drone companies successfully prioritize customer success by making it simple to integrate and scale drone solutions.

At Lucid Bots, our mission is to elevate efficiency, safety, and humanity by building the world’s most productive drones. At the time of writing this article, we are working with exciting customers that range in size and shape from professional sports teams to inspiring owner/operator companies that fly our Cleaning Drone. We are a growing team, filled with brilliant engineers, empathetic trainers, and an industry-leading support team. In order to understand how we built a customer-centric business model, it’s important to start this story from the beginning.

Failure to Fly

In 2018, my co-founders and I set out on a humanitarian mission. We saw workers suspended well-above ground on lifts, ladders, and scaffolds, trying to clean the exterior of buildings. Each year, there are a multitude of fatalities and life-altering injuries from using this equipment. To put it bluntly, we were appalled — how had no one found a way to leverage existing technology to make this job safer?

At the beginning of our journey, we set out on the path of least resistance, aiming to see how quickly we could prove if drones could clean buildings effectively, efficiently, and safely. To accomplish this, we bought a drone from an international company, who we will refer to as IDM (International Drone Manufacturer). Starting out, we bought one of their smaller industrial drones and built a bracket around it to conceptually show that drone cleaning was feasible. However, we soon learned that this drone was incredibly limited in its functionality. At this point in time, we had three major frustrations with our off-the-shelf drone from IDM:

1. The payload capabilities were underwhelming. While we quickly proved drone cleaning conceptually worked, it could only get about 30 feet off the ground because it lacked sufficient power to clean at greater heights.
2. Having a purpose-built drone matters. We had taken an off-the-shelf industrial drone, which lacked many of the features we needed to more effectively and efficiently clean.
3. We had to figure out everything on our own. The drone company provided no training, guidance on regulations, recommendations on insurance, etc.

While these issues seem significant, we convinced ourselves that #1 was the most important, so we decided to order a larger, more expensive industrial drone from IDM. To IDM’s credit, the first time we flew this new drone, we were jumping for joy. It had two extra motors, with each and every motor larger than the last drone, and it just looked like it could lift some serious weight! However, we then plugged in a new set of batteries and prepared for the second flight and…

That $30,000 drone would never take off again.

IDM had forced a firmware update after our first flight. We couldn’t take off until we updated their firmware, yet once we did, the drone was then unable to start the motors. It continually recognized itself as having 6 motors, rather than 8. For months (yes, months!), we wasted endless hours on the phone, trying desperately to receive any help from their support team with no success. At long last, they admitted they had no idea what was wrong and couldn’t fix it remotely, so they gave us an address to send it to half way around the world. We never saw that drone again…

While ordering the larger drone from IDM is our most regretted financial decision, it ended up being the best thing to ever happen to our company. Our abominable customer experience with this International Drone Manufacturer cost us tens of thousands of dollars in expenses, lost revenue, and missed opportunity. At Lucid, we subscribe to the motto that “failure is never final, so long as you learn from it,” and this experience allowed us to learn how to build the customer centric drone company that we always dreamed of working with.

How We Built a Customer Centric Business

Easy to Use, Easy to Buy

At our company, we live and breathe this maxim and use it as a guiding beacon in all of our efforts. To the average person, flying an industrial drone seems like a daunting task. Although we build incredibly sophisticated technology, with a multitude of sensors and intelligent features, our top priority is ensuring that our drones are easy to use. The truth of the matter is that drones aren’t complicated to use; what makes drones difficult is a lack of robust support.

To lower the adoption curve and introduce drone technology into old-school, sleepy markets, we offer training resources to all of our customers. It doesn’t matter if you have never flown a drone before, or if you just finished your PhD in aeronautical engineering, we support our customers through each and every step of the process to successfully integrate our technology into their business operations. We offer a full-spectrum support that empowers our customers to be successful by eliminating the guesswork of incorporating new technology.

Learning from the Past Experiences

When we first started our company, we were perpetually frustrated with our drone provider. Not only was the drone itself lackluster, the support and experience of working with this company was infuriating. Once we bought the drone, we had to figure out everything for ourselves:

1. How do I fly the drone?
2. What are the regulations I need to follow?
3. What safety precautions should I take?
4. What happens if I need help? How long does it take to repair the drone?
5. What type of insurance do I need? How much will it cost? Who will provide this insurance?
6. And so much more…

All of these compounding questions and headaches inspired us to build the drone company we always dreamed of —one that puts its customers first in every way possible.

Delighting Customers

Customers are naturally drawn to a product’s functionality — what can it do and how is it a better alternative to what they are currently using? In order for a customer to change what they are doing, though, it’s important to clearly articulate the product’s value, while also demonstrating that integrating the product into the customer’s existing operations will be simple.

We sell our drones and provide our customers with all of the technology and equipment they need to successfully integrate our technology into their operations (drone, batteries, controller, transportation case, and more!). Unlike other drone companies, we understand that ensuring customer success involves much more than the technology itself.

At Lucid, our product is much more than just a drone. It’s an experience.

We love building innovative solutions. But we love delighting our customers even more! We do this by making it simple to integrate our product into our customers’ operations. Beyond providing our drone technology, we offer the following value to our customers with every purchase:

1. On-going support and maintenance. We understand industrial drones are like cars and need some care and attention from time to time. If your “brake light” comes on, we will be right there to help you fix it.
2. Data. We teach our customers how to leverage the data that their drone collects to provide added value to their customers.
3.  Insurance. We have you covered! No need to waste time learning what coverage you need and how to procure it. We have a streamlined process that allows our customers to obtain cost-effective drone insurance in less than 15 minutes.
4.  Accessories. For our cleaning drones, we provide our customers with a list of recommended cleaning solutions and help them procure it at discounted rates.
5. And much, much more. The examples above are just a sampling of how we empower our customers to be successful. If you want to learn more about how we delight our customers, you’ll have to become one!

There’s no denying it — drones will fundamentally change the world. At Lucid Bots, we understand this and are building the dependable, customer-centric drone company. We’re not just building frontier technology, we are building a company and culture that enables our customers to quickly integrate and scale drone solutions throughout their operations.