Best Practices Identified Through the Completion of UAS Flight Demonstrations

Abstract

Verbatim from NASA NTRS. Not paraphrased, not summarized.

After several years of research into Detect and Avoid (DAA) and Command and Control (C2) systems for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) UAS Integration into the National Airspace System project initiated a focused two-year effort along with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and three industry partners to investigate remaining issues in the specification, test, certification and airspace integration to allow UAS operations in non-segregated airspace. The approach taken had the industry partners propose a flight demonstration approximating a commercial operation, while NASA helped, as needed, the partners through design and test phases and NASA observed interactions with the FAA. During this effort NASA collected best practices intended to be of value to similar UAS endeavors. These best practices can be divided into different sets, including practices that describe the relationship between business considerations to UAS design or describe several UAS development challenges. Another set includes best practices focused on navigating the UAS design and type certification processes. A third set includes best practices that relate to the design of the DAA system. Deploying DAA systems in this timeframe posed unique challenges. Commercial off-the-shelf DAA systems do not exist, necessitating custom development and, for two of the partners, the use of low-size, -weight, and -power (SWaP) sensors not completely specified for DAA. A fourth set of best practices relates to lost-link contingency planning. The final set of best practices relates to the design and testing of C2 systems and obtaining spectrum licenses. The UAS demonstrations were piloted remotely, and for all aspects of flight safety, a C2 system was required to communicate DAA and other UAS subsystem data to the remote pilot and to allow the pilot to issue commands to the vehicle. Throughout the course of this effort, the partners integrated prototype DAA and C2 systems into unmanned aircraft, tested those systems, and laid the groundwork for type certification programs that are expected to continue.

Authors

• Jeffrey M Maddalon Langley Research Center
• Kurt A Swieringa Langley Research Center
• Israel Greenfeld Glenn Research Center
• Summer L Brandt Ames Research Center
• Peter I Robinson Ames Research Center
• M Gilbert Wu Ames Research Center
• Seungman Lee Ames Research Center
• Paul Volk Adaptive Aerospace Group, Inc.
• John Del Frate The Aerospace Corporation

Keywords

• NASA
• FAA
• unmanned
• aircraft
• system
• UAS
• certification
• type
• operational
• operations
• approval
• DAA
• detect and avoid
• command and control
• C2
• spectrum
• radio
• lost link
• best practice
• design
• flight test