Finland to create friendly environment for drones

Finnish authorities want to make Finland a friendly testing environment for various ways of using drones, or unmanned aircraft, officials said on Thursday.

Pekka Henttu, aviation director at the Finnish Transport Safety Agency (Trafi), said drones could create a huge amount of new services. "Rules for the operations would only have to be developed," he told Finnish broadcaster Yle.

Even though drones have no human pilots on board, they could carry humans as customers. Henttu predicted that a "drone taxi" is not far away. He said passenger drones would be operational within a few years.

Henttu noted that besides the camera operations which have already been widely used, drones could later handle tasks related to wider information collection and terrain profiling for construction. Drones can also be developed for freight services. In information technology, drones could serve as link platforms.

Anne Berner, Minister for Transport and Communication, also said in a written statement that the administrative control of drones should improve both the business opportunities and the safe usage.

"From the perspective of streamlining the regulations, it is important that the requirements are carried out in a way that keeps the burden on administration as light as possible, and makes the threshold for entering the field as low as possible," she said.

The ministry has estimated that there are nearly 2,000 professionals in the field of unmanned aircraft in Finland and countless enthusiasts.