Iris Automation granted second waiver for BVLOS autonomous operations in City of Reno, as part of FAA’s BEYOND programme

Iris Automa­tion has been grant­ed a sec­ond waiv­er for Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) autonomous oper­a­tions on behalf of the City of Reno, a par­tic­i­pant in the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Administration’s (FAA) BEYOND pro­gramme, by util­is­ing its Casia G ground-based solu­tion.

The approval fol­lows the award of a waiv­er for Iris Automa­tion on behalf of the City of Reno’s Fire Depart­ment using Casia X for autonomous flights, which allows the oper­a­tor to fly with­out the need for visu­al observers or the Remote Pilot in Com­mand to main­tain visu­al con­tact with the drone. 

The BEYOND pro­gramme is designed to assist the FAA in estab­lish­ing safe­ty and per­for­mance stan­dards for BVLOS oper­a­tions by work­ing with a diverse array of indus­try and pub­lic stake­hold­ers. 

Gabrielle Wain, VP of Glob­al Pol­i­cy and Gov­ern­ment Affairs at Iris Automa­tion, explained: “Casia tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides a crit­i­cal safe­ty lay­er, by help­ing to enable the inte­gra­tion of uncrewed air­craft into our nation­al air­space. 

“This lat­est approval to fly BVLOS using Casia G gives oper­a­tors look­ing to per­form remote and one-to-many oper­a­tions a solu­tion to mit­i­gate the risk of mid-air col­li­sions, with­out hav­ing to use human visu­al observers, a crit­i­cal step for the eco­nom­i­cal scal­ing of small UAS BVLOS mis­sions.”

In May 2018, the City of Reno was select­ed by the Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (DOT) as one of nine state, local and trib­al gov­ern­ments to par­tic­i­pate in the FAA UAS IPP. The UAS IPP worked with nine pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships to imple­ment and study spe­cif­ic drone appli­ca­tions across the Unit­ed States in an effort to advance the safe inte­gra­tion of drones into the nation’s air­space.

Under the FAA’s Unmanned Air­craft Sys­tems Inte­gra­tion Pilot Pro­gram (IPP), Iris Automa­tion con­duct­ed a live drone flight demon­stra­tion for the City of Reno’s Fire Depart­ment of its Casia onboard Detect-and-Avoid (DAA) col­li­sion avoid­ance sys­tem in 2020.

Casia G uses Iris Automation’s patent­ed ‘Detect and Avoid’ tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate a sta­tion­ary perime­ter of sani­tised, mon­i­tored air­space, enabling UAVs to per­form work safe­ly by pro­vid­ing aware­ness of intrud­er-pilot­ed air­craft to manoeu­vre UAVs to safe zones. Casia G does not require inte­gra­tion into the air­craft, there­by pre­serv­ing pay­load for sen­sors or pack­ages while pro­vid­ing a greater choice of air­craft. 

Its ground-based place­ment gives organ­i­sa­tions greater flex­i­bil­i­ty in the abil­i­ty to estab­lish per­ma­nent, sani­tised air space and in the future to change loca­tions quick­ly sim­ply by relo­cat­ing Casia G. By pro­vid­ing a sani­tised ‘bub­ble’ of air­space, it can also sup­port an oper­a­tor to fly mul­ti­ple drones in the future. It pro­vides exten­sive real-world, oper­a­tional learn­ing in the field to help inform reg­u­la­to­ry rec­om­men­da­tions.

In Jan­u­ary, Doosan Mobil­i­ty Inno­va­tion (DMI) signed agree­ments with Iris Automa­tion and Drone Amer­i­ca to pur­sue its hydro­gen fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy to help enhance scal­able sys­tems for long range, autonomous BVLOS UAS oper­a­tions.