Vigilant Aerospace has completed a beyond line-of-sight test of its new FlightHorizon detect-and-avoid (DAA) collision avoidance system for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), in a series of flights held at Nasa Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, US.
The tests have showed FlightHorizon’s ability to provide beyond line-of-sight flight safety for small and mid-sized unmanned aircraft or drones.
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In addition, the system will enable users to comply with the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations and help safe integration of drones into the national airspace.
During the recently concluded flights, which feature around 100 planned encounters between UAS under realistic flight conditions, FlightHorizon’s DAA algorithms, hardware integration and user interface performance were tested.
The system detected and tracked intruder aircraft, as well as provided traffic alerts and collision warnings on air traffic during the encounters.
Two DJI Phantom 4 drones were used and 18 different scenarios were flown several times during the tests.
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By GlobalDataFAA’s senior UAV regulator and others were present during the tests, which were conducted after a multi-month programme of development, safety planning and test preparation.
Vigilant Aerospace has exclusively licensed the Nasa patent and software, which forms the basis of its FlightHorizon product.
The company noted that its FlightHorizon system uses off-the-shelf hardware and the existing national air-traffic control system.
The system is also designed to comply with FAA drone regulations on beyond line-of-sight flight, night flying and airspace authorisation requirements.
Image: Testing of FlightHorizon detect-and-avoid collision avoidance system for unmanned aircraft systems. Photo: courtesy of Vigilant Aerospace Systems.
