Connected and Autonomous Vehicles & Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
RSHC’s Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) professionals provide advice, strategy, and counsel in litigation avoidance and preparation, acquisitions, product liability, and intellectual property issues to clients building, selling, buying, using, and interacting with ground and aerial autonomous vehicles. Our clients include established product manufacturers, tech startups, entities seeking to acquire AV technology, and firms in the defense, applied science, hybrid electric vehicle, and aeronautical engineering industries.
We care deeply about the value that emerging autonomous vehicle technologies can bring to society, and we want to advance companies investing in these technologies by being flexible and experienced advisors from the ground up. Whether a client needs to create their in-house legal team from scratch, know what up-and-coming legal issues they will likely face, acquire a new business, minimize costs during litigation, or prevent litigation altogether, our CAV and UAV Teams are designed to meet needs wherever they arise. We provide cost-sensitive, flexible rates and individual client teams that can be scaled to meet needs. We understand the issues that can arise from being an emerging player. We stay abreast of the ever-changing landscape of artificial intelligence and autonomous technologies, and thus can offer guidance for developing a technology more advanced than the regulatory system in which it is built. In short, we are tech-forward, intuitive communicators who can adeptly handle legal crises and business future-casting alike.
With decades of experience as aerospace attorneys, our CAV and UAV team members are exceptional practitioners skilled across many disciplines. We know how to navigate compliance in the muddy terrain of state and federal regulation. We’re experienced in handling complicated transactions. And we’ve parachuted in as counsel at the last moment of trial. We are exceptional writers, thinkers, litigators, dealmakers, and advocates.
Some might say we are techies turned lawyers. The lawyers on the CAV and UAV teams have trained as pilots, flew in flight simulators, built model airplanes as kids, and wander Air and Space museums for hours. We drive racecars, love auto design, and watch endless engineering and design episodes on television. Combine that with exceptional skills in litigating and advising in fields related to artificial intelligence, product liability, and intellectual property, and it’s no surprise we built teams focused on autonomous vehicles — ground and aerial vehicles alike.
We stand at the ready to combine our disparate passions and exceptional talents into one unified team to serve a client’s many needs in autonomous vehicle technologies or parallel industries.
Insights
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Overcoming Fear-Driven Regulations in Advanced Air Mobility
The excitement surrounding air mobility is palpable. San Francisco will host the AIRTAXI World Congress this year from October 2-5, 2023.
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Generative AI Is Here and Ready to Disrupt
Cue our “weird” world. Before November 2022, “generative AI” was not a household term. By early December 2022, ChatGPT had 1 million users; by the next month, it had more than 100 million users. This explosive growth far outstrips any user adoption of consumer applications in history.
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Who Will Be Held Liable for Autonomous Vehicle Accidents?
Autonomous Vehicles (AV) are quickly becoming closer to becoming the norm for everyday life. The question stands that if an AV is involved in a crash, who will be held accountable?
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In Some States, the Future for Autonomous Trucking is Here
The global supply chain crisis has been one of the most widely discussed economic problems since the Ever Given lodged itself into the side of the Suez Canal. In the United States, part of the reason for this is the shortage of truck drivers. There are currently about 80,000 fewer drivers than what the economy demands. A number of start-ups have begun working to solve this problem by replacing truck drivers with autonomous trucks. Autonomous trucks don’t have to follow the hourly limits that truck drivers must follow. As a result, they can do twice the work of their human counterparts.
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Autonomous Vehicles: Current Legal Landscape and Challenges on the Horizon
RSHC’s Autonomous Vehicles Team offers a brief snapshot of the ever-evolving legal landscape for connected and autonomous ground vehicles (“CAV”) and unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAV”). The article provides federal and state-by-state overviews of CAV and UAV laws and regulations, including Arizona, California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Virginia.
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Connected Vehicles Bring Promise of Mobility — and Jobs — to Two Million People With Disabilities
Riddle: What lifts people out of long-term poverty; pours previously untapped pools of workers into the workforce, thereby stimulating the economy; and grants independence to two million people with disabilities in the United States? Answer: Self-driving vehicles.
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Public Comments Close on Proposed FAA Rule Governing Remote ID of Unmanned Aerial System
The Federal Aviation Administration closed public comments in March 2020 on a newly proposed rule aimed at integrating unmanned aircraft systems (“UAS”) such as drones to United States airspace, specifically low-altitude air traffic. This article outlines the key provisions of the FAA’s proposal for Remote Identification of UAS in an incremental phase towards the eventual goal of comprehensive UAS traffic management.
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The Public and Private Sectors Are Ready to Unleash Unmanned Maritime Vehicles
Are unmanned maritime vehicles the next frontier in autonomous technology? The defense, commercial, and scientific sectors have realized the potential for unmanned maritime vehicles (UMVs). This article provides an introduction for stakeholders — manufacturers, insurers, consumers, and operators — to understand the governing authorities of UMVs.