The Future of UAS

Integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) into the national airspace (NAS) for social and economic, i.e., commercial, reasons is a much-talked about and pressing issue.  Developing policies and procedures that support an acceptable level of safety for UAS without negatively impacting current commercial operations in the NAS is a significant undertaking.  Accordingly, the biggest advancements in UAS technology in the next five to ten years will come from the civilian sector in the form of UAV traffic management and control in the NAS.

"The FAA has maintained its stance that safe UAV integration cannot take place without a UAV reporting system in place" (UAS Vision, 2015, para. 3).  The emergence of unmanned aerial systems in recent years has given rise to increasing concerns about these systems’ SAA capability as UAS begin to share the same airspace as manned aircraft.  Current radar technologies and ADS-B reporting systems are unable to locate and track drones due to their small size and low altitudes.  This make is difficult for air traffic controllers to manage commercial and hobbyist drone operations.

PrescionHawk has proposed an unmanned traffic management (UTM) system called LATAS.  LATAS, which stands for Low Altitude Tracking and Avoidance System allows beyond-line-of-sight control using the existing cellular network.  LATAS can be integrated into an unmanned aerial vehicle's (UAV) circuit during manufacturing.  As an automated air traffic control system LATAS has an onboard system that provides two-way communication for flight planning, tracking and avoidance for every drone in the sky using real-time flight data transmission based on existing world-wide cellular networks.  The development of LATAS is based around the idea that we can use existing technologies at a low cost and weight, and avoid the creation of an entire new system.  By developing this automated air traffic control system, each platform has the intelligence to transmit its location and altitude in real time, which is sent to air traffic controllers and pilots in aircraft cockpits while reporting back to the FAA.

Implementation of an unmanned air traffic management system will permit safe integration of UAV into the NAS, a key requirement of the FAA, and open the skies for commercial operations.

Reference

UAS Vision. (2015, January 13). PrecisionHawk's Low Altitude Tracking and Avoidance System. Retrieved from http://www.uasvision.com/2015/01/13/precisionhawks-low-altitude-tracking-and-avoidance-system/