NASA has chosen locations in Nevada and Texas to assess the safe use of drones in crowded urban environments.
On February 19th, NASA's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) project announced where it will test the fourth and final stage of their project on controlling drone traffic. The first location is Las Vegas' Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems, a government-funded non-profit which promotes the growth of Nevada's unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) industry. The second is the Lone Star UAS Center for Excellence and Innovation in Corpus Christi, Tex., one of seven Federal Aviation Administration test sites.
The assessments are meant to determine if its drone management system can safely regulate drone traffic in an urban area. While the first stage also tested low-flying drones, stages two and three brought the drones into airspaces of sparsely-populated and moderately-populated areas, respectively. The fourth stage will examine whether drones can be used safely for functions like gathering news and delivering packages in dense urban areas.
“Our [program] represents the most complicated demonstration of advanced unmanned aircraft systems(UAS) operating in a demanding urban environment that will have been tested to date,” said Ronald Johnson, NASA UTM project manager.
The program’s final goal is to create a UAV Traffic Management system that would allow UAVs to safely navigate low-altitude flight without needing human operators to directly follow the flight-path of every drone. The system would give information about weather and wind speed while ensuring that only authenticated drones have the liberty to fly in the airspace. In stage four, the UTM project is testing a rudimentary form of that system alongside UAV safety features, such as automated safe landing tech and vehicle-to-vehicle communication.
Stage four will start quite quickly: the Nevada drone flights are planned to happen between March and June, with its Texan counterparts following throughout July and August. According to UTM, the results of the tests “will help inform future rules, policies and traffic management procedures for operating drones safely over populated areas.”