NASA has launched the final stage of a four-year effort to develop a national traffic management system for drones, testing them in cities for the first time beyond the operator’s line of sight as businesses look to unleash the uncrewed devices in droves above busy streets and buildings.
Multiple drones took to the air at the same time above downtown Reno this week in a series of simulations testing emerging technology that someday could be used to manage hundreds of thousands of small uncrewed commercial aircraft delivering packages, pizzas and medical supplies.
“This activity is the latest and most technical challenge we have done with unmanned aerial systems,” said David Korsmeyer, associate director of research and technology at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
Photo: AP
An autonomous drone on Tuesday took off from the rooftop of a five-story casino parking garage and landed on the roof of another out of view across the street. It hovered as onboard sensors adjusted for gusty winds before returning close to the center of the launchpad.
Equipped with GPS, others flew at each other no higher than city streetlights, but were able to avoid colliding through onboard tracking systems connected to NASA’s computers on the ground.
Similar tests have been conducted in remote and rural areas. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has authorized individual test flights in cities before, but never for multiple drones or outside the sight of the operator.
Photo: Reuters
The new round of tests continuing this summer in Reno and Corpus Christi, Texas, marks the first time simulations have combined all those scenarios, said Chris Walach, executive director of the Nevada Institute of Autonomous Systems, which is running the Reno tests of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.
“When we began this project four years ago, many of us wouldn’t have thought we’d be standing here today flying UAVs with advanced drone systems off high-rise buildings,” he said.
The team adopted a “crawl, walk, run” philosophy when it initiated tests in 2015, culminating with this fourth round of simulations, said Ron Johnson, project manager for unmanned aircraft systems traffic management at Ames Research Center.
“We are definitely in the ‘run’ phase of this development here in Reno,” he said.
The results are to be shared with the FAA. The agency in January outlined proposed rules that would ease restrictions on flying drones over crowds, but said it would not take final action until it finishes another regulation on identifying drones as they are flying — something industry analysts say could be years away.
Critics say that the FAA has stymied the commercial use of drones by applying the same rigid safety standard it uses for airlines.
“There can be a lot of Silicon Valley mentality where people don’t want to wait. So, we’re trying to strike a balance between unleashing entrepreneurship and ensuring we’re doing it safely, while trying to accelerate acceptance of drones in public,” Johnson said.
Amazon.com Inc and FedEx Corp are among the companies that hope to send consumer products by drone by next year.
Drone delivery company Flirtey began testing delivery of defibrillators for cardiac arrest patients in Reno last year under FAA oversight.
Johnson said that cities present the biggest challenges, because of limited, small landing areas among tall buildings that create navigation and communication problems.
It became apparent early on that the travel management plans for drones would have to be completely automated because FAA air traffic controllers cannot handle the enormous workload, he said.
The system is being tested with the help of 36 private partners, including drone manufacturers, operators, software developers and other third-party service providers, Johnson said.
The system uses software on the ground that communicates flight plans and positions to other software systems. The drones are equipped with programs for landing, avoiding crashes, surveillance, detection and identification, optical cameras and systems similar to radar that work with lasers.
Ames Research Center director of aeronautics Huy Tran said her supervisors at NASA headquarters were surprised to hear they had been testing drones in Reno.
“They said, ‘Are you crazy?’” she said. “We hope [the test in] Reno shows drones can be flown and land safely.”
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