Trending
BISMARCK - The Northern Plains Unmanned Aviation Systems Test Site, working with the North Dakota National Guard, has executed its first missions under a master agreement signed last month with the Devils Lake based-Camp Grafton Training Center facilities, the North Dakota Department of Commerce announced Friday.
The project supported efforts for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to test concepts in UAS Traffic Management. NASA has been researching these efforts for several years. This spring marks the third time the Northern Plains UAS Test Site has conducted flights with NASA on UAS Traffic Management. Each event is scaled to evaluate varying levels of complexity in operations.
The first level of testing evaluates the ability to operate multiple UAS in rather close proximity to each other at the same altitude. This testing was performed in the spring of 2017 and examined multiple aircraft flying beyond-visual-line-of-sight distances from the pilot.
Additional testing at Camp Grafton this spring will evaluate supporting technologies, such as redundant communications links with the UAS, communication link robustness through spectrum monitoring, public portals of information accessible from online and remote identification methods for identifying UAS. These efforts are also looking into ways to improve the data sharing that occurs across the UAS Traffic Management system and make it more robust.
Operations were conducted in late March to mid-April 2018 at the Camp Grafton North facilities. Northern Plains' partners included Simulyze Inc., a team from Rockwell Collins and the University of Iowa, ISight RPV Services, SkySkopes, uAvionix, Altavian Inc. and Regulus Cyber.
"Camp Grafton was able to help us push the envelope of testing with its location and support from the National Guard. Being positioned close to the Devil's Lake Airport and having many buildings and structures that make up a small urban environment made for an ideal testing location," said Nicholas Flom, executive director of the Northern Plains UAS Test Site.
Northern Plains is one of seven Federal Aviation Administration UAS test sites in the nation. The mission of the test site is to collaborate with FAA and industry partners to develop, systems, rules and procedures to safely integrate unmanned aircraft into the National Airspace System without negatively impacting existing general or commercial aviation.