Pilot licence for drones is obligatory
If you wish to fly one of AGRO’s drones, you will need a licence. All purchases of drones need to be approved and they subsequently have to be registered in AGRO’s operations manual.
In this day and age where drones are becoming ever more popular for different usages, our working environment has been expanded to include the atmosphere. This is one of the reasons why guidelines are needed for the use of drones in AGRO.
Another reason is that AGRO has received permission from the Danish Transport and Construction Agency to fly drones. The permit stipulates that drones should be correctly registered and that we keep an operations manual. It is this operations manual – or guidelines – that has now been prepared and has taken effect.
- It is important that we comply with the regulations, both for safety reasons, to meet the requirements set by the Danish Transport and Construction Agency and for insurance purposes. AGRO is the responsible body if anything should happen, says section manager in MARK, Karen E. Henriksen.
AGRO and the Department of Engineering (ENG) share the responsibility for the drone collection. This saves manpower, time and money in connection with the registration, pilot training, purchases, etc. AGRO and ENG combined currently have 10 drones and 10 approved pilots.
The drones are on their wings a lot of the time – doing things like taking aerial photographs of crops in the field, landscapes or events where the pictures are used for documentation, monitoring of experiments or other special tasks. The drones can also be fitted with heat-sensitive cameras that are used, for instance, to monitor wildlife in the field. Some of the experiments with the drones involve optimising picture analysis and examining and testing the range of uses of the drones.
Manager Jens Bonderup Kjeldsen is one of our drone pilots:
The new guidelines have been drawn up by Karen E. Henriksen and the drone pilots René Larsen, KLIMA, and Uffe Pilegård Larsen, MARK. The guidelines will be put on AGRO’s staff web pages under “Committees and Minutes/Drone-team”.
When you have undergone your training as a drone pilot you have to pass a test with Uffe Pilegård Larsen, who himself has received training in administering this test. He travels to the location of the would-be pilot who is then allowed to take the test using the drone that he/she is accustomed to using.
René Larsen is the person responsible for registering the drones and pilots. This is done in the AU Labbook, which is a shared electronic archiving system for which René is a superuser.