2024 FAA Drone and AAM Symposium: Michael Robbins Day One Opening Remarks

July 31, 2024 | AUVSI News

Today, Day One of the 2024 FAA Drone and AAM Symposium opened with keynote remarks by AUVSI President and CEO, Michael Robbins.

Remarks as prepared:

It’s great to see everyone here at the Baltimore Convention Center for this year’s FAA Drone & AAM Symposium – the 8th consecutive staging of this event as a collaboration between AUVSI and the FAA. We’re grateful for their partnership and eagerness to meet directly with industry. 

I want to begin on a somber note and take a moment to recognize a significant loss in our industry. As many of you know, last week, we lost a friend and a colleague. Chris Kucera was a tremendous thought leader in the aviation safety industry. He is someone many of us in this room – myself included – called upon frequently for advice and counsel.  

Chris tragically died doing what he loved – flying. As a champion for aviation safety, it is especially tragic that he died when his airplane lost power and crashed. 

So, while we take a moment to recognize the loss, we should also take a moment to thank Chris for all the good work he did to advance aviation safety and the emerging aviation industry. I think Chris’ legacy is one of prodigious accomplishments, significant advancements, and fellowship.  

So rather than a moment of silence to remember Chris, please join me in a round of applause to thank him for these contributions and to memorialize his legacy. Thank you.    

Legacy. It’s a meaningful word. 

As the new leader of AUVSI, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I want AUVSI’s legacy to be.  

Champion of aviation safety – fundamental. Yes.  

Changemaker for integrating advanced aviation – absolutely. 

The voice for uncrewed and highly automated avionics, aircraft, and autonomy – you bet.  

Our role at AUVSI is to create an environment where big questions can be explored, and great ideas can happen.  

The AUVSI team is listening carefully to pinpoint challenges and moving toward points of friction in the industry so that we can help to solve problems. 

Our goal is to help kickstart the flywheel and get things moving faster towards integration, as we all recognize needs to happen. 

We are at a pivotal moment in aviation history, with drones and AAM aircraft unlocking significant benefits in both safety and technology leadership. With those benefits will come tremendous economic activity and workforce opportunities.  

Drones offer a cost-effective solution for critical operations including public safety, package delivery, precision agriculture, utilities maintenance, infrastructure inspections, and much more.  

AAM is revolutionizing propulsion systems, battery technology, and flight controls, unlocking new areas not served by traditional aviation and enhancing workforce productivity and safety.  

Across the nation, and around the world, companies are opening high-rate production facilities and creating thousands of high-quality manufacturing jobs.  

Drones and Advanced Air Mobility are also opening aviation careers to a broader and more diverse workforce, including workers with physical disabilities, those without advanced technical degrees, and rural workers who do not live near traditional economic centers of legacy aviation. 

The true potential for industry and workforce growth, however, will only be realized when the regulatory frameworks are in place for aircraft certification and operations.  

The rules need to be laid out, understood, and adhered to. 

And that’s why we’re all here!  

This week at the symposium there will be numerous great sessions on topics of importance within the drone and Advanced Air Mobility industries.  

The FAA has put together a great agenda and brought together the right stakeholders for these important conversations.  

Looking at the drone industry first, as we all understand, to achieve Connected Skies, we must first move beyond segregated, protected airspace for normalized, integrated UAS operations BVLOS.  

BVLOS rulemaking is very important for operations, but so is demonstrating public good and economic impact – and I know many of the organizations participating this week are tacking these issues head-on and there are some great sessions addressing these important topics.  

Topics on the drone side of the agenda this week will include Beyond Visual Line of Sight operations and rulemaking, UTM, national security and public safety, UAS detection & mitigation, workforce – and many more.  

These are important conversations for aligning industry and government. 

Personally, I’m looking forward to hearing from leaders within ATO, NextGen, NASA, and ICAO this week about digital ATC, data sharing, harmonization, and standards. 

Because as we all know, to facilitate the density of operations envisioned in the future, we must move toward a future where ADS-B out is incentivized for legacy aviation users, and we must move towards an info-centric NAS with more data sharing between industry and government.  

Shifting to Advanced Air Mobility, there are also exciting developments occurring in the industry and within the policymaking.  

I’ll speak more about the specifics of policymaking tomorrow, but for today, I am looking forward to the conversations this week around vertiports and infrastructure, autonomy, electrification, and global collaboration.  

Of note, we’ll hear more this week about the forthcoming national strategy for AAM that has been a focal point for the Executive Branch, but has brought in state, local, tribal, and territorial leaders too – as it will truly be a whole of government effort to achieve integration and ensure the U.S. is the world leader in Advanced Air Mobility. 

With much work to do to implement the FAA Reauthorization Act–and many more opportunities as drone and AAM companies scale and technologies advance–the challenges ahead for integration of highly automated, autonomous, and uncrewed systems into the National Airspace System is monumental. We are clear eyed about that.  

That is why events like this matter. AUVSI is proud to work with the FAA to create an environment where progress can be made through educational and networking opportunities like this one – both in the sessions, and in the hallways.  

I hope you will take advantage of all the opportunities available to connect with industry leaders, learn from decision-makers, and forge relationships that lead to problem-solving. Thank you.