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Flying Lion and Iris Automation add airspace awareness capabilities to Drone as First Responder programmes

Fly­ing Lion and safe­ty avion­ics tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tor Iris Automa­tion will pro­vide Drone as First Respon­der (DFR) pro­grammes with enhanced air­space aware­ness, adding Iris Automation’s Casia G ground-based detect and alert sys­tem to Fly­ing Lion ser­vices.

With over 22,000 DFR flights logged to date, Fly­ing Lion works with lead­ing law enforce­ment agen­cies to pro­vide rapid emer­gency response and aer­i­al assess­ment includ­ing for Chu­la Vista, Redon­do Beach, San­ta Mon­i­ca and Bev­er­ly Hills Police Depart­ments.

In order to com­ply with cur­rent FAA require­ments, Fly­ing Lion and these DFR pro­grams have been util­is­ing human remote pilots in com­mand (RPICs) and visu­al observers (VOs) to allow for BVLOS oper­a­tions in their cities.

While this has been nec­es­sary to com­ply with FAA cer­tifi­cate of autho­riza­tions (COAs), it is not opti­mal for ongo­ing or large-scale DFR oper­a­tions, which enable imme­di­ate dis­patch of drones in response to a 911 call for the pur­pose of real-time aer­i­al sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness, and to sup­port ground units to enhance first respon­der safe­ty.

With Casia G, the next gen­er­a­tion of DFR pro­grams will have the capa­bil­i­ty to cre­ate a vol­ume of sur­veilled air­space to con­duct drone oper­a­tions with­out the need for human visu­al observers.

Casia G is a small, pas­sive, low-pow­er weath­er-hard­ened device that can be installed where there is a clear view of the sky like a rooftop, street light pole, cel­lu­lar tow­er or oth­er ver­ti­cal struc­ture.

Casia G detects coop­er­a­tive air­craft using Auto­mat­ic Depen­dent Sur­veil­lance — Broad­cast (ADS‑B) and non-coop­er­a­tive air­craft using Iris’ patent­ed com­put­er vision and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence soft­ware.

Once an air­craft is detect­ed, two con­cepts of oper­a­tion are pos­si­ble:
1) Casia G alerts the Remote Pilot in Com­mand (RPIC), pro­vid­ing the clas­si­fi­ca­tion and loca­tion of the detect­ed air­craft, who then ini­ti­ates an avoid­ance manoeu­vre and resumes the mis­sion once the detect­ed air­craft is clear of the oper­a­tional area.
2) Casia G sends an auto­mat­ed col­li­sion alert to the uncrewed aer­i­al system’s com­mand soft­ware, result­ing in the sys­tem auto­mat­i­cal­ly exe­cut­ing a pre-pro­grammed avoid­ance manoeu­vre.

Fly­ing Lion pres­i­dent and founder Bar­ry Bren­nan com­ment­ed: “Fly­ing Lion is proud to part­ner with Iris Automa­tion to pro­vide a safer envi­ron­ment to con­duct DFR oper­a­tions. Casia G tech­nol­o­gy for beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) drone flights breaks new ground for pub­lic safe­ty – it not only saves time and resources but also allows first respon­ders to bet­ter pro­tect the com­mu­ni­ties they serve.”

Mul­ti­ple Casia G nodes can be deployed to cov­er any oper­a­tional area, enabling drones to cov­er an entire munic­i­pal­i­ty. DFR pro­gram man­agers can then have BVLOS oper­a­tions of mul­ti­ple UAS from mul­ti­ple launch points.

In addi­tion, the abil­i­ty to fly rou­tine BVLOS mis­sions enables cen­tralised man­age­ment and oper­a­tions of the UAS and inte­gra­tion into 911 dis­patch and real-time crime cen­tre oper­a­tions.

There are more than 18,000 munic­i­pal police depart­ments in the USA, and only 200 of them have access to an aer­i­al asset. BVLOS oper­a­tion of drones enables the remain­ing 17,800 depart­ments to not only have access to an aer­i­al asset, but with­in exist­ing bud­get con­straints.

Iris Automa­tion CEO Jon Damush added: “Casia G pro­vides an inex­pen­sive and effec­tive way for cus­tomers to take advan­tage of BVLOS flight through increased air­space aware­ness with­out the use of visu­al observers.”

Iris Automa­tion and Fly­ing Lion will be exhibit­ing at the Nation­al Pub­lic Safe­ty UAS Con­fer­ence, March 14–15, 2023 in Williams­burg, VA.

Last April, Iris Automa­tion was grant­ed a sec­ond waiv­er for BVLOS autonomous oper­a­tions on behalf of the City of Reno, a par­tic­i­pant in the FAA’s Beyond pro­gramme, by util­is­ing Casia G.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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