The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has awarded $12 million to fund 19 drone research and testing projects intended to help safely expand drone operations in the National Airspace System. The awards, made through the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Broad Agency Announcement Program, fund companies working with FAA-designated UAS Test Sites to evaluate technologies supporting safe drone integration, advancing the Unleashing American Drone Dominance executive order by supporting the use of FAA test sites to develop, test and scale American drone technologies.

“The UAS Broad Agency Announcement Program gives us another way to directly work with industry and our test site partners on technologies that are critical to safe drone integration,” said FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford. “The research supported through this program will give us better data, help us identify and understand operational challenges, and inform how we safely integrate these aircraft into the National Airspace System.”

The funded projects include ground-based and onboard systems to help drones detect and avoid other aircraft, from General Atomics, NAVMAR and Skydweller; tools connecting air taxi operations, vertiports and flight procedures with wider airspace systems, across four separate awards to ANRA Technologies; a secure system for verifying drone identity and flight approval, from DroneUp; satellite communications testing for long-range drone flights, from Censys Technologies; passive radar for collision avoidance, from OneRadio; and sensor systems supporting drone traffic management, counter-drone operations, visibility and sensor-performance measurement, across three awards to SPS Aerial Remote Sensing. Further awards went to Devorto Corporation for a long-range cargo drone service, Frequentis USA for a drone technology demonstration, Lighthouse Avionics for long-range route surveillance tools, Aerial Vantage for managing reserved urban airspace, ResilienX for mission and resource coordination software, and Oklahoma State University for drone visibility research under its Aero Aware project.

FAA UAS TEST SITES

The awards support the FAA’s nine designated UAS Test Sites: the Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration; the Northern Plains UAS Test Site in North Dakota; the New Mexico State University UAS Test Site; the State of Nevada UAS Test Site; the New York UAS Test Site; the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi Autonomy Research Institute; the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership in Virginia; the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma; and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.