As rulemaking on Remote ID continues to be delayed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), key industry players are working on a solution to safely integrate more drones into National Airspace (NAS). On September 12th, in San Bruno, California, a live demonstration took place in controlled airspace using the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC). Attendees and participants from AirMap, AiRXOS, ANRA Technologies, CNN, Flite Test, Kittyhawk.io, Uber, UASidekick, Wing, and Skyward were on hand to show how drone operations can be identified by law enforcement agencies while protecting the operator’s privacy.
As rulemaking on Remote ID continues to be delayed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), key industry players are working on a solution to safely integrate more drones into the National Airspace. On September 12th, in San Bruno, California, a live demonstration took place in controlled airspace using the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC). Attendees and participants from AirMap, AiRXOS, ANRA Technologies, CNN, Flite Test, Kittyhawk.io, Uber, UASidekick, Wing, and Skyward were on hand to show how drone operations can be identified by law enforcement agencies while protecting the operator’s privacy.
The companies, mentioned above, united to demonstrate the successful implementation of standard ASTM WK65041 (Remote ID and Tracking) to support the identification of drones by both law enforcement and citizens across various use cases and flight scenarios in the United States and Switzerland. On September 16th, a similar demonstration to the one held in San Bruno was conducted in the latter country by the Swiss U-Space Implementation (SUSI) team and other stakeholders.
For the ASTM Remote ID and Tracking to work, a total of 35 regulatory and industry organizations involved in developing the standard are proposing it includes a Discovery and Synchronization Service (DSS), which enables UAS Service Suppliers (USS) to exchange safety-critical information while protecting operator privacy.
AirMap has been actively contributing to the development of the ASTM network Remote ID standard since the beginning. Last December, AirMap demonstrated remote ID on the InterUSS Platform with Wing and Kittyhawk.io. During recent demonstrations in San Bruno and Switzerland, multiple unmanned aerial vehicles were operating in close proximity to each other. One citizen was curious about a particular fast-moving unmanned aerial vehicle. The Remote ID application was able to provide information about the purpose of the mission via a URL.
The ATSM Standard does not require an operator to possess any specific aircraft equipment in order to be remotely identified when flying with LAANC authorization in controlled airspace. Different UAS Service Suppliers (USS) are able to exchange data via the Linux Foundation’s open-source InterUSS Platform?. The InterUSS Platform implements the Discovery and Synchronization Service (DSS) defined in the proposed ASTM Standard. Google’s Wing was the original developer of the InterUSS platform and demonstrations of its capabilities were held at the start of 2019.
“Drones and their interoperability represents one of the most important areas of innovation across the technology industry,” said Mike Dolan, vice president of strategic programs, the Linux Foundation. “We’re excited to support the InterUSS Platform and global developer community to advance drone operations around the world.” The InterUSS platform protects remote pilots by making it hard for third party aggregators to obtain information about drone operators or their customers.
Remote ID is essential to the advancement of the drone industry because it allows for safety, accountability, and transparency for all stakeholders. The commercial industry is continually growing while hobbyist activity is in a steady decline. Companies like Skyfront are demonstrating the benefits of what Remote ID will enable by taking the initiative to conduct beyond visual line of sight operations under the FAA’s supervision. The demonstrations, mentioned above, conducted by AirMap, UTM Service Providers, and Swiss industry stakeholders will help push Remote ID forward and make it a reality in a timely manner.