Volansi to work with industry experts and enable safe drone integration into US national airspace

Volan­si has part­nered with three of the nine par­tic­i­pants in the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion’s BEYOND pro­gram, to accel­er­ate the inte­gra­tion of Unmanned Air­craft Sys­tems (UAS) into the Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem (NAS).

Regard­ed as a leader in a leader in VTOL mid­dle-mile drone deliv­ery ser­vices, Volan­si is work­ing direct­ly with the North Car­oli­na Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (NCDOT), the North Dako­ta Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alas­ka Fair­banks.

BEYOND is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the FAA’s Unmanned Air­craft Sys­tems (UAS) Inte­gra­tion Pilot Pro­gram (IPP) that was imple­ment­ed in Octo­ber 2017. The goal of BEYOND is to con­tin­ue devel­op­ing the part­ner­ships that have already been estab­lished, build on the progress, and tack­le the remain­ing chal­lenges to ensure safe inte­gra­tion of drones, like Volansi’s VOLY C10, in the NAS.

“We are real­ly excit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in BEYOND and help get us one step clos­er to being free from the lim­i­ta­tions of our cur­rent ground infra­struc­ture,” said Han­nan Parviz­ian, Volan­si CEO and co-founder. “Each one of our part­ners are unique and under­tak­ing projects essen­tial in per­form­ing the research and test­ing required to safe­ly inte­grate drones into the nation­al air­space.”

In the sum­mer of 2020, Volan­si announced a team­ing agree­ment with NCDOT to exe­cute mid­dle-mile drone deliv­ery projects in North Car­oli­na. Not long after, the VOLY C10 began an on-going project deliv­er­ing tem­per­a­ture-con­trolled med­i­cine and rou­tine vac­cines from Merck’s man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty to patients at Vidant Health­plex-Wil­son.

Volan­si con­tin­ues to work with NCDOT to gath­er data on drone deliv­ery pro­grams and how they could be incor­po­rat­ed long-term into the cur­rent trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture and reg­u­la­tions.

And last year, the com­pa­ny part­nered with the North­ern Plains UAS Test Site (NPUASTS) to sup­port Van­tis, North Dakota’s statewide UAS net­work, which enables flights beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS).

After a com­pet­i­tive selec­tion process, the VOLY C10  was the only drone select­ed to inte­grate and test Van­tis’ tech­nolo­gies, such as Com­mand and Con­trol (C2) links or ground-based Detect and Avoid (DAA). Data cap­tured from the suc­cess­ful test flights will be used to devel­op stan­dard require­ments that will apply to any air­craft fly­ing on the net­work.

Parviz­ian added: “Our goal is to uti­lize our VOLY C10 drone to pro­vide the required data and lessons learned through var­i­ous exer­cis­es to help reg­u­la­to­ry teams and pol­i­cy­mak­ers with­in the FAA and The Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion inform reg­u­la­tions, pol­i­cy, and guid­ance to stream­line the approval process­es for UAS inte­gra­tion. These projects will help to unlock the skies for drone deliv­ery.”