ANRA Technologies Launches VISTA Airspace Awareness Application for Drone Operators

ANRA Tech­nolo­gies has intro­duced the Visu­al Inter­face for Shared Traf­fic Aware­ness (VISTA), a new appli­ca­tion designed to give drone oper­a­tors greater vis­i­bil­i­ty of near­by uncrewed air­craft activ­i­ty by dis­play­ing avail­able flight-intent and posi­tion data from Uncrewed Air­craft Sys­tem Traf­fic Man­age­ment (UTM) ser­vices.

Announced on 14 Octo­ber, VISTA is aimed at pub­lic safe­ty agen­cies, com­mer­cial drone oper­a­tors and organ­i­sa­tions con­duct­ing activ­i­ties such as infra­struc­ture inspec­tion and drone deliv­ery. The appli­ca­tion dis­plays avail­able infor­ma­tion about near­by drone flight inten­tions and report­ed posi­tions in a visu­al for­mat.

As drone oper­a­tions expand, air­craft oper­at­ed by dif­fer­ent organ­i­sa­tions are increas­ing­ly shar­ing low-alti­tude air­space. ANRA says oper­a­tors may have lim­it­ed vis­i­bil­i­ty of near­by flights, par­tic­u­lar­ly when those mis­sions are man­aged by sep­a­rate organ­i­sa­tions or sys­tems. VISTA is designed to help oper­a­tors assess activ­i­ty around planned mis­sions and make bet­ter-informed oper­a­tional deci­sions.

VISTA does not con­nect air­craft to UTM ser­vices or sub­mit flight plans, instead func­tion­ing as a recieve-only plat­form. It pro­vides an addi­tion­al source of sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness with­out requir­ing oper­a­tors to replace their exist­ing air­craft or flight appli­ca­tions.

ANRA says that VISTA pro­vides sev­er­al capa­bil­i­ties for orga­ni­za­tions oper­at­ing in shared air­space, such as:

• View­ing avail­able infor­ma­tion about drone flight inten­tions and report­ed posi­tions around a mis­sion area for greater flight aware­ness.
• Dis­play­ing shared oper­a­tional data in a for­mat that pilots and sup­port­ing teams can quick­ly under­stand and respond to.
• Check­ing rel­e­vant drone activ­i­ty before launch, and main­tain­ing aware­ness of oth­er drones through­out a flight.
• Access­ing shared air­space infor­ma­tion with­out replac­ing air­craft, flight appli­ca­tions or exist­ing oper­a­tional sys­tems — mean­ing less dis­rup­tion to exist­ing infra­struc­tures that choose to make use of VISTA.

Poten­tial users include emer­gency ser­vices run­ning Drone as First Respon­der (DFR) pro­grammes, where air­craft may be deployed near inci­dent scenes, as well as util­i­ties and infra­struc­ture oper­a­tors con­duct­ing inspec­tions and main­te­nance. In these envi­ron­ments, aware­ness of oth­er drone activ­i­ty can be rel­e­vant to mis­sion plan­ning and flight safe­ty.

VISTA builds on ANRA’s exist­ing UTM and air­space visu­al­i­sa­tion work. The com­pa­ny reports that its UTM plat­form sup­ports approx­i­mate­ly one drone mis­sion every 15 sec­onds dur­ing day­time oper­a­tions. It also says more than 20 organ­i­sa­tions, pri­mar­i­ly DFR pro­grammes, already use its visu­al­i­sa­tion capa­bil­i­ty to mon­i­tor drone activ­i­ty in their oper­at­ing areas.

The appli­ca­tion relies on infor­ma­tion avail­able through the UTM ecosys­tem, mean­ing its use­ful­ness depends on the data shared and report­ed by par­tic­i­pat­ing ser­vices. It is intend­ed to com­ple­ment exist­ing oper­a­tional pro­ce­dures rather than replace them, with data from pre­vi­ous uses poten­tial­ly feed­ing back into the ecosys­tem to fur­ther refine the sys­tem.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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