Oneida County given task order worth $897,000 from NASA to carry out automation technology research

Onei­da Coun­ty has been award­ed an $897,000 task order for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty devel­op­ment through a NASA con­tract, at its Unmanned Aer­i­al Sys­tems (UAS) Test Site at Griff­iss Inter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Sit­u­at­ed in the US state of New York, the facil­i­ty in Rome is one of just sev­en sanc­tioned by the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) and will con­duct research for NASA in automa­tion tech­nol­o­gy, to sup­port high-den­si­ty ver­ti­port oper­a­tions for VTOL air­craft.

The goal of the research is to devel­op tech­nol­o­gy that will sup­port safe, secure, resilient and effi­cient heavy-lift UAS car­go deliv­ery and pas­sen­ger car­ry­ing.

Antho­ny J. Picente, Coun­ty Exec­u­tive, said: “Onei­da County’s long-stand­ing part­ner­ship with NASA has proven to be a pro­duc­tive one. Togeth­er, we have con­duct­ed cru­cial research that has led to trans­for­ma­tive advance­ments in the UAS indus­try. I look for­ward to the impact this new col­lab­o­ra­tion will have on the future of this emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy.”

The task order is part of NASA’s Aero­nau­tics Research Mis­sion Direc­torate Inte­grat­ed Avi­a­tion Sys­tems Pro­gram Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Project, and will be exe­cut­ed over the next year. Addi­tion­al work is expect­ed to be award­ed as a result.

The work con­duct­ed will help sup­port the project in under­stand­ing bar­ri­ers to the oper­a­tion of ver­ti­ports, devel­op­ing infra­struc­ture require­ments need­ed to increase their scale and matur­ing automa­tion tech­nolo­gies to sup­port the growth of their traf­fic.

The task will also help mature test­ing range require­ments for the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty nation­al cam­paign series, which expects to host future events high­light­ing high-vol­ume ver­ti­port oper­a­tions for pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing eVTOL oper­a­tions.

Chad Lawrence, Onei­da Coun­ty Avi­a­tion Com­mis­sion­er, added: “This new NASA task order has posi­tioned Onei­da Coun­ty to be the leader in Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty devel­op­ment. It is a tes­ta­ment to the high qual­i­ty of work con­duct­ed by our UAS Test Site and its part­ners.”