Innovation in the Sky

This Phase II proposal presents a scope of work to develop reliable Sense and Avoid for BVLOS Unmanned Aerial Vehicle [UAV] operations. We first analyze a) the requirement for avoidance based on the UAV's ability to get away from danger and b) the suite of candidate technologies needed to detect intruders with ample time to get away. To meet this need we will build a reliable FINE TRACKING sensor for knowing where nearby objects are located and an EARLY WARNING sensor for the region outside the coverage of the Fine Tracker. The first step is to substantially improve the candidate sensor technologies [radar, LiDAR and V2V] for our specific requirements. This is because the individual technologies have typically been designed for other markets and on their own will not solve Sense and Avoid. But the combination of our improvements to these three technologies along with smart data fusion will provide meaningful Early Warning and Fine Tracking of any likely intruders. We will then run experiments to verify that we can reliably detect and then avoid our two most challenging targets; namely power lines and toy drones. We will then report on our results and provide recommendations for commercialization.