Friday, May 1, 2015 - 6:05 p.m.
SANTA CRUZ >> About 550 people showed up Friday at Kaiser Permamente Arena on Friday, not to watch basketball, but to learn about what could be technology's next big thing.
The Drone, Data X conference had an international flavor with attendees from Ireland, South Africa, Germany, Australia, France, Greece and Switzerland, organizers said.
"Every home is going to have a drone pretty soon," predicted Parimal Keparekar, who works for NASA in air traffic management research, describing efforts to build a highway in the sky for them. "Right now there is no congestion management problem, but eventually there will be."
Hobbyists can buy a cheap quadcopter for $20. A model with a camera starts at $40.
Anyone can fly a drone "right out of the box" creating a potential for problems in national air space, noted Jim Williams of the Federal Aviation Administration.
"It is the FAA's highest priority to get the rules down," he said.
Typically it's 16 months from the time the comment period closes - last week for the proposed drone regulations - to when rules are finalized.
"We're doing everything we can to beat that," Williams said, noting more than 260 drone operators authorized under the Section 333 exemption, and more than 1,000 applications, in addition to more than 700 government operators.
This year, at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, there were 17 unpiloted aerial systems exhibits, which Williams said was "just amazing."
He said he urges drone makers to provide guidance to buyers, citing the KnowBeforeYouFly.org education campaign created by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. The association represents users in government, industry and academica, the Academy of Model Aeronautics, a hobby group, and the Small UAV Coalition, a trade association, with FAA.
To one man who asked about out-of-sight flying, which would not be allowed under the proposed rules, Williams said he expected sensor technology to improve, noting it has yet to be certified.
"We were told Santa Cruz is the drone zone in the USA," said Francis Vierboom, co-founder of year-old Australian startup Propeller, which aims to create a standardized mapping interface for the surveying and mapping industry.
Australia, which adopted rules before the U.S., has fined drone pilots for flying over bushfires and crime scenes to capture video and photographs.
Flirtey, a 2-year-old Australian company with a booth in the exhibition hall, has a trial in New Zealand to see if drones can search for missing people and deliver emergency supplies. Co-founder Matthew Sweeny said he spoke to investors at the conference, one of his objectives.
Andreas Raptopoulos of Matternet in Menlo Park talked about his pilot drone delivery project to start in Switzerland in July after experiments in Bhuhan and Papua New Guinea.
Paul Regen of Felton said he was impressed by the panoramic photos shown by Romeo Durscher, a Swiss native working for DJI Global, a Chinese company that is world's biggest supplier of civilian drones.
Durscher said he envisioned drones delivering pizza, bettering technology on "The Jetsons," the futuristic 1960s cartoon.
"Anytime you have a protest you know you have made it," he said, referring to residents upset by a change in the San Francisco Airport flight path sending noisy jets over their homes.
Aptos transportation consultant Myles Kitchen said he sees uses in motor sports, filming drivers on the race track, and in forensics, reconstructing accident scenes.
Doug Erickson of the Santa Cruz New Tech MeetUp, just back from China, saw "tons of drones" at the Silk Market, a huge shopping center in Beijing.
When he asked about the price of a DJI drone, he was told $4,000 then $600.
Conference organizer Phil McNamara said he was happy with the turnout and promised next year's would be bigger.
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