NASA UAS in the NAS

HF Designworks has supported NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in meeting the goals of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the National Airspace System, aka UAS in the NAS. This effort seeks to fill key gaps in the current NASA research and technology portfolio in the areas of modeling and simulation, separation assurance and detect and avoid, systems analysis, certification and test techniques for unmanned aircraft systems. Current Federal Aviation Administration safety of flight rules and certification standards were written with the assumption of having a pilot aboard the aircraft. These standards limit operation of unmanned aircraft systems in the national airspace. The goal of NASA’s UAS in the NAS project is to reduce technical barriers related to the safety and operational challenges associated with enabling routine access for unmanned aircraft systems to the NAS. As part of this effort, HF Designworks reviewed the latest UAS advances, exploring advanced waypoint navigation and autopilot technologies, as well as detect and avoid auto resolver type algorithms.