AFWERX contracts Near Earth Autonomy to collaborate on reliability standard

The US Air Force’s AFWERX has cho­sen Near Earth Auton­o­my to col­lab­o­rate on a reli­a­bil­i­ty stan­dard for autonomous aer­i­al trans­port as part of the Auton­o­my Prime pro­gram.

Near Earth and AFWERX aim to address ques­tions about the process nec­es­sary to achieve the reli­a­bil­i­ty required by reg­u­la­tors, insur­ers, and end-users to cre­ate a risk-based approach for the accred­i­ta­tion of autonomous uncrewed aer­i­al vehi­cles (UAVs), pro­vid­ing assur­ance equiv­a­lent to com­mer­cial Part 135 crewed oper­a­tions, with less than one acci­dent in 100,000 flight hours.

This will see Near Earth and AFWERX estab­lish an accred­i­ta­tion process to for­malise assur­ance for autonomous air­craft. The process will con­sid­er both the autonomous aircraft’s capa­bil­i­ties and the oper­a­tional envi­ron­ment to cre­ate safe­ty cas­es for typ­i­cal trans­port oper­a­tions. Near Earth will also devel­op an archi­tec­ture that sup­ports Mod­u­lar Open Sys­tem Archi­tec­ture (MOSA)-compliant inter­op­er­abil­i­ty.

“The upcom­ing effort with Near Earth Auton­o­my is impor­tant for inform­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for autonomous capa­bil­i­ties, with sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits to both the com­mer­cial and gov­ern­ment avi­a­tion auton­o­my com­mu­ni­ties,” said Lieu­tenant Colonel Tom Meagher, AFWERX Prime Pro­grams lead.

San­jiv Singh, CEO of Near Earth, added: “We expect that auton­o­my will be inte­gral to mil­i­tary flight oper­a­tions, and it will be the way that com­mer­cial flight oper­a­tions will scale. AFWERX is bring­ing all the nec­es­sary pieces togeth­er to make the wide­spread use of uncrewed logis­tics a real­i­ty.”

Lieu­tenant Colonel Bryan Ral­ston, AFWERX’s auton­o­my prime lead con­clud­ed: “Eval­u­a­tion of these tech­nolo­gies and mov­ing towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is impor­tant for future autonomous oper­a­tions in the Depart­ment of Defense.”

Since 2012 Near Earth focus­es on aer­i­al logis­tics required to resup­ply troops in for­ward, unim­proved envi­ron­ments with min­i­mal or no infra­struc­ture. To date, Near Earth has inte­grat­ed its tech­nol­o­gy with over 100 air­craft and logged more than 3,000 flight hours on over 6,600 flights.

In May 2021, Volo­copter start­ed work­ing with Near Earth Auton­o­my to enable beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) oper­a­tions for its Volo­Drone eVTOL.

Volo­copter part­ners with Near Earth Auton­o­my to enable BVLOS capa­bil­i­ties for its Volo­Drone eVTOL