CASA Collaborates with Academic and Industry Groups on Advanced Air Mobility Project

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A team of academic and industry experts, including the Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) in the College of Engineering, is collaborating with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on a project aimed at controlling an expected increase in low-flying manned and unmanned aircraft over cities in the U.S. in the next decade.

The team includes three universities and four private companies and is headed by researchers at the University of North Texas, Denton.

CASA will lead the design and development of weather alerting services for the overall system. This is a key to making sure it is working together to ensure safe skies through proper communication and coordination.

The team is one of 11 selected to work with NASA on their Advanced Air Mobility National Campaign. The goal of the campaign is to test the capabilities and readiness of vehicles and systems that could revolutionize mobility in and around densely populated metropolitan areas.

Today, low-flying traffic consists mostly of unmanned drones operated by a human controller. But, industry partner Unmanned Experts Inc., CEO Keven Gambold says we are entering a new age. “This is all is about the next generation of urban transportation, mixing fleets of manned and unmanned low-flying aircraft delivering people, parcels and pizzas across our cities,” Gambold said. “We are finally entering the age of flying cars.”

Other participants include: The Lone Star Unmanned Aircraft System Center of Excellenceat Texas A&M University; One Sky of Exton, Pennsylvania.; ResilienX, Inc. of Syracuse, New York; Unmanned Experts Inc., and Frequentis USA, Inc. of Columbia, Maryland.

Campaign participants will demonstrate integrated operations in real life scenarios including: use of two-way network flight plan communications; beyond visual line of sight operations; real and simulated vehicle and operations emergency contingencies; dynamic traffic avoidance and trajectory management; and approach and landing in the presence of structures and associated mechanical turbulence.