Page 47 - Australian Defence Magazine July-August 2021

JULY-AUGUST 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
STEM 47
Remote Pilot
LEFT: The company provides drone training across 11 locations around Australia.
FAR LEFT: UAVAIR is a drone education provider to the ADF.
specialised use of integrated beyond visual line of sight op- erations to show Army and show soldiers that this is the way forward.”
Finally, the company remains passionate about its VET in Schools program, which provides students with a Cer- tificate III in Aviation (Remote Pilot) as well as an Aero-
“We help organisations implement their own drone ca- pability,” Sutton said. “Obviously drones have a lot of dif- ferent uses, but they’re only clearly valuable when they’re solving a business problem. So we start with the business problem and then work from that to design the systems that answers their problem.”
As an example, Mirragin worked with a vehicle import business that sought to use drones to track car movements and visually inspect them. Tracking cars is a problem drones can solve, but a basic visual inspection can simply be
achieved using a camera.
“It’s not about jumping to the drone,” Sut-
ton said. “You don’t just do this for the sake of doing it, you do it because it makes eco- nomic sense, or it makes sense from a safety perspective or a capability perspective.”
Sutton also makes clear that drones are not a one-shot solution to a problem; they come with a background of considerations that need to be
factored into organisational planning.
“There’s a whole lot of things that you need to consider
that exist beyond the drone,” he explains. “What’s your safety management system, how are you structuring the workforce, what about stakeholder engagement and repu- tation management?”
nautical Radio Operators Certificate and a Licence. The program has reportedly ex- panded by 50 per cent in the last 12 months.
“We’ve got quite a strong program in NSW and particularly Queensland, where people are seeing this training as getting students ‘ job-ready’,” Mann said. “There’s opportuni- ties in agriculture, mining, emergency ser- vices, and media.
“We need to make our students ready for the future and drones will be part of that in some form or another.”
MIRRAGIN
Another success story in the world of drones is Mirragin, founded by Rob Sutton in 2017. Sutton is a former member of 20th Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery. Much like UAVAIR’s students, he is looking at defence, agriculture, mining and infrastructure as industries that could most benefit from UAS.
“THERE’S BEEN EXPONENTIAL GROWTH IN THE USE OF DRONES AND A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF DRONE LITERACY”
UAVAIR