Iris Automation’s detect-and-avoid system Casia X available for shipping from next month

Iris Automa­tion’s onboard mul­ti-cam­era detect and avoid (DAA) sys­tem, Casia^® X, will be avail­able for ship­ping from May 21st. 

Casia X is the only solu­tion for com­mer­cial drones and unpilot­ed air­craft deliv­er­ing a full 360° radi­al detec­tion capa­bil­i­ty using com­put­er vision tech­nol­o­gy. Orig­i­nal­ly intro­duced as Casia 360, Casia X is an evo­lu­tion of the Casia prod­uct line that offers sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments.

This includes increased prob­a­bil­i­ty of detec­tion per­for­mance by 7 per cent and a 12X reduc­tion in false detec­tions, based on near­ly 16,000 total real-world manned air­craft encounter flight tests.

As well as improved soft­ware reli­a­bil­i­ty, there is a new archi­tec­ture that will sup­port cam­era con­fig­u­ra­tions from one to six units to pro­vide flex­i­bil­i­ty in weight and field of view. Final­ly, a visu­al air­craft encounter replay tool­ing and log files to help analyse detec­tions and air risk.

Jason Hardy-Smith, vice pres­i­dent of prod­uct at Iris Automa­tion, said: “The response to Casia X has been phe­nom­e­nal, and we are thrilled to deliv­er the prod­uct into our cus­tomers’ hands. We’ve gained sig­nif­i­cant feed­back and expe­ri­ence since we first announced our 360 degree capa­bil­i­ty, which has been instru­men­tal in shap­ing its capa­bil­i­ties for this major glob­al mar­ket.”

Casia is also being test­ed as part of sev­er­al glob­al civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ty pro­grams, includ­ing the FAA’s BEYOND pro­gram to advance com­plex BVLOS UAS oper­a­tions in the US Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem.

As part of the BEYOND Pro­gram, Iris has so far part­nered with four lead par­tic­i­pants — the City of Reno, Kansas Dept of Trans­porta­tion, Uni­ver­si­ty of Alas­ka Fair­banks (ACUASI) and the Choctaw Nation. Iris had pre­vi­ous­ly part­nered with each of these lead par­tic­i­pants in the FAA’s UAS Inte­gra­tion Pilot Pro­gram (IPP) which con­clud­ed in Octo­ber 2020.

AviSight, a leader in unmanned indus­tri­al inspec­tion and advanced data solu­tions, has part­nered with Iris as a Casia X beta user. The com­pa­ny intends to inte­grate Casia X into its field test­ing of long lin­ear inspec­tion oper­a­tions.

William O’Donnell, direc­tor of oper­a­tions at AviSight, said: “Our cus­tomers under­stand that unmanned mis­sions can dra­mat­i­cal­ly enhance effi­cien­cies, reduce costs and improve the over­all safe­ty of their infra­struc­ture main­te­nance and envi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing pro­grams.

“Tech­nolo­gies like Casia pro­vide us with addi­tion­al lay­ers of safe­ty, help­ing us advance toward BVLOS oper­a­tions, in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors invest­ed in safe air­space inte­gra­tion. We are excit­ed to be work­ing with the Iris Automa­tion team.”  

First ship­ments of Casia X will be pri­ori­tised to pre-ordered cus­tomers. Lim­it­ed pro­duc­tion slot reser­va­tions are still avail­able. Iris Automa­tion will host an infor­ma­tion­al ask-me-any­thing ses­sion about Casia X’s pro­duc­tion avail­abil­i­ty on April 29th at 11am PT.

You can reg­is­ter at www.crowdcast.io/irisautomation and more infor­ma­tion about Casia X is at www.irisonboard.com/casia.