Nine suppliers of unmanned air vehicles gathered in a remote area of the sprawling Kennedy Space Center complex in Florida on 11 May to show how certain missions currently banned by US regulators can be performed safely with existing technology.

“The exposure is always good,” says Pat Lohman, chief operating officer of Toronto-based PrecisionHawk, which contributed the 3lb (1.36kg), Lancaster Mk3 UAV. “We wanted to prove we could use autonomy safely,” Lohman says.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is required by law to formulate rules that would open national airspace to small UAVs for commercial purposes. Hobbyists are allowed to fly sometimes identical remote-controlled aircraft without restrictions, but the FAA prohibits access to national airspace for commercial reasons.

AUVSI partnered with Space Florida – the state’s aerospace economic development agency based at Kennedy Space Center - to hold a demonstration aimed at showing regulators and the public how small UAVs can be operated safely.

"This is an opportunity to educate not just the public but the regulators and the decision makers of how this technology can improve every aspect of our lives,” says Michael Toscano, president and chief executive of AUVSI.

The nine participants, which included seven companies and two universities – were required to use the UAVs to perform four surveillance missions on the KSC test range – precision agriculture, lost or injured person, controlled burn and disaster response.

Arranging the event normally prohibited by federal regulators took more than two years to accomplish, Toscano says.

Each vehicle and flight had to be reviewed and approved by several government agencies, including the FAA, NASA and the US Air Force, says Jim Kuzma, senior vice-president and chief operating officer of Space Florida.

As the flights were conducted on restricted airspace that is managed under NASA’s custody, Space Florida did not require a certificate of authorisation and waiver (COA) to perform the demonstration, Kuzma says.

But the agencies took elaborate precautions to make sure the demonstration was safe.

Mark Gillespie, chief executive of NV-OS, noted how the FAA required his team to use two licensed pilots with current medical qualifications to operate the company’s Ncognito UAV. He says that NV-OS is “very grateful” to all the regulators who allowed the Ncognito to participate.

Keeping risks to a minimum was the goal. “This is keeping the public advised and knowledgeable about what UAVs can do,” says Denny Roderick, vice-president and director of flight operations at ASEC, which cleared the airworthiness and risk plans of each participant.

Source: FlightGlobal.com