We are in a time where there is so much innovation
and new entrants that are emerging left and right.
One of the most prolific new entrants
are these drones or UAS.
We expect exponential increase
in UAS operations as we move forward.
How we safely and efficiently integrate these operations
play a key role within the NAS.
For over 60 years,
the FAA has provided one of the safest
and most efficient airspace systems within the world.
Innovation has been one of the main areas
that we concentrate on
while always maintaining the safety
of the operation occurring within the airspace.
In order to safely and efficiently
incorporate UAS into our airspace,
we need to work together
between industry, government, and the public,
to ensure that we are able
to meet the demands of operational needs
of UAS within the NAS.
Within the UTM pilot program,
we've brought together USS or US Service Suppliers,
the FAA, NASA, technology partners, test sites,
as well as supplementary data service suppliers.
So we have a whole myriad of industry and government experts
that have come to collaborate
and establish a unique ecosystem
to test various concepts,
and establish a unified outlook.
We've had a team of experts build out an architecture,
figure out different requirements,
establish an infrastructure to support various capabilities
to test with live flights as part of this demonstration
and validation activity and exercise.
We wanted to make sure the various stakeholders
that have an interest
in how these drones are integrated safely,
have their needs met.
Areas like public safety and public safety partners,
what their needs look like,
defer from what our air traffic partners
within the FAA needs look like.
In order to address various stakeholder needs,
what we have done
is establish this new UAS traffic management ecosystem,
a more integrative and inoperable system.
First we start to take a look at a high dense environment
where their are many UAS flying in a very small area,
overlapping volumes,
and many conflicts of operations
and their planned operations.
Another area that we work through and test
is how the deconfliction works within the airspace
and the operators,
and the various USS that are supporting the operators.
Enabling data exchange between industry and the FAA
is one of the predominant guiding principals
that we've worked through,
as well as exchanging the information
in a safe and secure manner.
We also work with the USS
to validate what the inner USS communication methodology
would look like.
Lastly, we work through different concepts
within remote identification
and we've looked to enable
and validate some of the standards
from the ASTM International Standards Body.
This starts to take into account
some of the public safety needs,
how we would potentially give public safety entities,
those that have authorized access to that information,
a holistic side of information
from a remote ID that has been broadcast from a vehicle.
Back in 2017,
visiting the NASA Ames Research Lab,
they were in the early stages of flight testing
these initial capabilities.
It started to open my eyes
to the real world views cases
that could have a significant impact on everyday activities.
The first time all of these pieces fit together,
an actual operational use case
occurring within a real-life environment,
is when we witnessed some of the initial flight testing
at the Virginia Tech test site with their partner wing.
They were conducting actual deliveries in a nominal manner
to the local community in Cristiansburg, Virginia.
In the midst of a global pandemic,
the need for these operations
have become more and more present.
Conducting these activities
and flushing out these concepts
will be a key enabler to conducting operations
within the NAS safely and efficiently.
We plan on approaching these various capabilities
very methodically,
doing the right level of testing
and validation before implementation.
We hope we can give you a little bit more insight
into the details of activities
that we've done over the past year
to safely integrate UAS into the airspace
and give you a look
into what the UTM ecosystem continues to evolve into.