GPS World

Tag: IRIS UAS

  • Kongsberg Geospatial and AiRXOS partner on UTM airspace management for critical infrastructure

    Kongsberg Geospatial and AiRXOS partner on UTM airspace management for critical infrastructure

    New solution integrates the real-time Kongsberg IRIS UAS airspace management picture into the AiRXOS’ Air Mobility Platform to provide integrated unmanned traffic management services around critical infrastructure

    AiRXOS, part of GE Aviation, has fully integrated the real-time airspace picture from the Kongsberg Geospatial IRIS airspace management application into its own Air Mobility Platform for unmanned traffic management.

    IRIS UAS is a spatial awareness system that allows UAS pilots to operate safely beyond Visual Line-of-Sight (BVLOS). The system is shown here running on a Windows Surface Pro tablet. (Photo: Kongsberg Geospatial)
    IRIS UAS is a spatial awareness system that allows UAS pilots to operate safely beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). The system is shown here running on a Windows Surface Pro tablet. (Photo: Kongsberg Geospatial)

    IRIS UAS fuses multiple disparate, real-time sensor feeds to create a highly accurate airspace picture around critical infrastructure locations such as airports.

    This provides real-time calculation of aircraft separation, airspace monitoring alerts and communications line-of-sight prediction to enable detect and avoid for safe beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations.

    The real-time local airspace picture is then integrated into the cloud-based AiRXOS’ Air Mobility Platform, a dynamic, cloud-based foundation, purpose-built for advanced operations and the evolving future of transportation.

    The Air Mobility Platform manages the volume, density, and variety of unmanned traffic management (UTM) data, and provides enterprises with a single platform to connect and manage operations, applications and devices.

    Through this collaboration, the companies will provide UTM customers with a fully integrated view of airspace for real-time airspace insights, and greater scalability and repeatability of advanced operations.

    “Situational awareness of the airspace across applications, unmanned aerial system (UAS) advanced operations, conformance monitoring, compliance, and pilots is critical to a UTM environment — allowing enterprises to be more responsive and efficient,” said Ken Stewart, CEO, AiRXOS. “Our partnership combines Kongsberg Geospatial’s expertise in airspace management with AiRXOS’ dynamic platform, applications, and services, providing customers with the opportunity to truly scale critical infrastructure advanced UAS operations like BVLOS and multi-vehicle, helping to lower risk and increase savings.”

    “We’re very pleased to be working with an unmanned traffic management innovator like AiRXOS,” said Ranald McGillis, president of Kongsberg Geospatial. “Their ability to create a comprehensive surveillance view of operations and then to scale it for a nationwide use provides an excellent and very unique use case for our technology.”

  • Kongsberg Geospatial offers certifiable application for unmanned traffic management

    Kongsberg Geospatial offers certifiable application for unmanned traffic management

    Kongsberg Geospatial’s IRIS UAS situational awareness application now provides a certifiable option to monitor drones and airspace. Kongsberg Geospatial is an Ottawa-based developer of real-time geospatial visualization software.

    The IRIS UAS Airspace Situational Awareness application meets the requirements of the DO-278A Assurance standard for air traffic management systems.

    By anticipating the regulatory requirements for airspace visualization with Unmanned Traffic Management or UTM, the IRIS display will be a regulatory approved component increasing the safety of commercial drone flight operations — especially when operating beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS).

    IRIS UAS program director Paige Cutland uses the IRIS UAS airspace situational awareness application to monitor the progress of a drone on a beyond line-of-sight (BVLOS) mission from a portable ground control station set up in a trailer.

    Kongsberg Geospatial has been providing software design assurance to meet the certification requirements for real-time geospatial and spatial awareness technology to support air traffic management, air defense applications and unmanned systems for nearly three decades.

    Their IRIS UAS situational awareness application had its genesis in supporting military UAV flight operations and was developed to help operators safely pilot UAVs in BVLOS operations. It was also used by regional airspace UTM managers to monitor the operations of multiple drones simultaneously.

    The DO-278A standard (Guidelines for Communication, Navigation, Surveillance and Air Traffic Management [CNS/ATM] Systems Software Integrity Assurance) is the primary standard used by certification authorities such as FAA, EASA and Transport Canada to provide the assurance of software contained in non-airborne CNS/ATM systems. Unmanned systems manufacturers that build ground control stations for commercial drone systems, and airports and port authorities that create airspace control systems are anticipated to have to meet this standard when designing and building new systems.

    By developing an airspace awareness application that satisfies this standard, Kongsberg Geospatial has provided a key component for unmanned systems manufacturers, airport operators and port authorities that wish to develop ground-based monitoring systems that are safe and certifiable for commercial operations.

    “Unmanned Traffic Management and safe airspace operations will require certification of technology,” said Ranald McGillis, president of Kongsberg Geospatial. “We believe providing a certifiable airspace application will dramatically increase the safety of unmanned flight operations wherever it’s in use.”