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December 25, 2015 04:00 pm

A Silicon Valley For Drones, In North Dakota

An anonymous reader writes: Commercial drone development has come a long way in the past five years or so, but (as evidenced by the near miss in Italy) they still aren't something you'd want to see crowding our skies. They're not terribly reliable, they have a pretty short range, and they're loud. Clearly, there's an even longer road ahead to turn them into everyday tools. Silicon Valley may seem like a natural hotbed for development, but it turns out North Dakota might end up being where bleeding-edge drone development happens. "North Dakota has spent about $34 million fostering the state's unmanned aerial vehicle business, most notably with a civilian industrial park for drones near Grand Forks Air Force Base. The base, a former Cold War installation, now flies nothing but robot aircraft for the United States military and Customs and Border Protection." Testing drones in North Dakota, with its wide-open spaces, farms, and oil fields, neatly sidesteps many of the safety and privacy issues facing drones in more populated areas. The state is also fostering drone pilots: "[T]he University of North Dakota, which already trains many of the nation's commercial pilots and the air traffic controllers of some 18 countries, has 200 students learning to fly drones in a four-year program that started in 2009; 61 students have graduated from it. North Dakota State University, in Fargo, has also started teaching drone courses."

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