New College Major Allows Students To Learn How To Operate Drones
The Univeristy of North Dakota offers a major that may intrigue some and horrify others, as Unmanned Aircraft Systems majors learn how to operate drones.
The university was the first to introduce the major, as they did so in 2009, and many other universities with aviation programs have followed suit since.
The Federal Aviation Administration has been instructed by Congress to fully integrate drones into the airspace by 2015.
By that time, there could be up to 15,000 unmanned planes flying above the United States.
“It’s a rising new frontier of aviation,” said Andrew R. Lacher, a researcher at the Mitre Corporation, a nonprofit organization that does extensive work for the government on drones. “Just about anything you do with aviation today,” he said, “you can do with unmanned aerial vehicles in the future.”
While the U.A.S. students study many things that other aviation students, but they also study the peculiarities that drones possess, such as the telemetry that connects the pilot on the ground to the unmanned aircraft.
The use of the technology in this country is a mystery, and that has many people uneasy about the drones.
Jordan Shepherd | Elite.
