Anna Forrester
General Atomics, Honeywell, NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration are conducting field tests on a sense-and-avoid system to support unmanned aircraft operations in the National Airspace System, Aviation Today reported Monday.
Juliet VanWagenen writes that the government-industry team began the third series of flight tests this summer through the use of live and virtual environments to check UAS interaction with air traffic controllers.
“Our focus is on trying to do research that will provide us with results that will assist the FAA with developing rules and regulations that will ultimately allow for routine access for UAS in the NAS,” said Laurie Grindle, manager of unmanned aircraft systems integration for a National Airspace Systems project at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center.
The field tests are part of NASA’s research on sense-and-avoid technology under the UAS-NAS program to address barriers in the integration of UAS into commercial airspace, the report said.
VanWagenen reports the tests will run through the end of August with the use of General Atomics and Honeywell technology and the platforms Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast and a Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System II.
