Northern Plains UAS Test Site

Beyond the Buzz (episode 5) - Northern Plains UAS Test Site  

November 18, 2024  

27m 31s 

Trevor Woods(0:00-27:31): Good morning everybody thank you for attending Beyond the Buzz and my name is Trevor Woods. I'm the executive director here at the Northern Plains UAS Test Site. I'm going to talk a little bit about the test site, a little bit of overview a little bit of our capabilities, a little bit of our history, here this morning. And so I'll kind of just scratch the surface on many of the topics or projects that we are part of as the test site each one of these are worthy of their own presentation which I'm sure can show up another time in a future Beyond the Buzz so with that. Thank you for listening to this and we'll just keep going here with the presentation. The test site has officially been designated since December 30th of 2013; however uas, the history inside North Dakota, has gone back all the way to 2005 with our past political leaders currently Senator Hoeven used to be Governor Hoeven. Lot of leadership inside the University of North Dakota the City of Grand Forks, other leaders from the state of North Dakota saw an opportunity to bring uas capability to North Dakota all the way back in 2005 as I said earlier leveraging a lot of the expertise from the University of North Dakota, the manned aviation program that they've had running there for for a long time. We've had a baseline of professional experience and training and education that we were able to utilize in the establishment of the test site and so around 2011, 2012 we knew that there was going to be this test site program that was on the horizon. The state of North Dakota invested you know the resources and the people to put a proposal together and ultimately came forward to be what we believe to be the premier test site of the test site program and so what you'll see here are some pictures from you know the University of North Dakota's training Fleet. Our political leaders the day that we were announced that North Dakota was selected as one of the, at that time, six test sites and then a picture of one of our Radars out in Western North Dakota which is part of the Vantis program just kind of shows a little bit of progression of where we've gone. The test site what do we do. Reality is it's kind of whatever our sponsors need us to do and so as a test site we really like to focus on integration of technologies specifically with innovation research and policy development. We do things such as flying the aircraft although more often than not we are supporting other entities in the operation of their aircraft. Sometimes we provide just simply advisory or Consultation Services. This is different than what a normal consultant company would do, this is more specialized in navigating regulations and policy and other challenges when it comes to working with the FAA or other federal government agencies that regulate this space. We support research whether it be the University of North Dakota's research whether it be North Dakota State University, other entities that bring forth research capabilities and ideas. Ultimately they are generally looking to take some widget or piece of technology or process or idea and we're able to create an environment that lets them test and evaluate and iterate their design through through numerous operations and then through our vast network of partnerships we have access to facilities and assets that whether it be remote operations in the middle of nowhere North Dakota or whether it be working with our Grand Sky Partners to get them access to the runways and the capabilities of the Grand Forks Air Force Base. Those are all things and capabilities that we at the test site are able to to bring forward. The test site itself is part of the state of North Dakota and as such our governor's office has created a process in which we will be overseen through an authority board or essentially our version of a board of directors and you will see here that is actually cheered by lieutenant governor and has eight offices of the state of North Dakota who oversee our activity. It's done this way because early on in the history of the test site we realized that we did not fit us easily into any one of these offices but what we could do as the test site in fact could overlap many of these offices and and their goals and objectives and what they're trying to achieve and so instead of having us really just live in one we operate and are overseen by by many of these agencies to ensure that we're acting and operating in the best interest of the state of North Dakota, which is really here to serve and support industry in integration of their uas. Although we are the North Dakota test site we have actually operated in 17 other states outside of North Dakota including the state of Alaska you know the concentration of activity really is in North Dakota however some times our partners our sponsors may require us to bring our services to other parts of the United States and usually this is just due to efficiency of their operation access to their resources, ultimately a lot of what they do we believe eventually makes its way back to North Dakota when they start to advance their operations such as when they're looking to grow their Beyond Visual Site capability. This is a unique attribute of our test site this is something that we actually developed from day one, was making sure that the services and what we can do as a test site are transferable to other parts of the United States and we did that because we kept our focus on real world operations and use cases meaning that if the test site is going to be valuable for industry we needed to go where industry needed us and sometimes that might be out in the Mojave desert in California or that might be in parts of Minnesota but ultimately doing and working those partnerships allows us to eventually mature their technology, their processes to needing to get to that Beyond visual line of sight which is continually the challenge for for industry today. So some of the things that we have done call it capabilities or experiences again I'm not going to deep dive any one of these in great detail but just kind of give you a little snapshot of what we have done over our 10 years and in fact coming up on our 11 years now. We really are rooted in detect and avoid experience that's really what has driven a lot of activity at the test site is finding the right way to recognize other aircraft in the airspace system and the technology the process the procedure and the policy to what we call remain well clear meaning in a traditional sense when you're in the cockpit you're flying along the rules and regulations are as such that you know all pilots in the cockpit will see and avoid each other but when you're not in the cockpit we have to find alternative ways of achieving that which you know alternative means of compliance using some electronic system and we call that detect and avoid. We've started you'll see pictures here of just smaller uas that we use to evaluate different technologies algorithms processes and you'll see also the term shielded Ops which is using infrastructure close to the ground whether it be trees or buildings or power lines where we know traditional aircraft would not be operating and therefore would be safe for a drone to operate. One of our larger programs is a program called the FAA baa or broad agency announcement really it's just a generic title but it's a program in which the faa has funding that they can partner with industries and test site and the test site to evaluate different concepts of technology. In this example here you'll see command and control reliability which is one example of any where industry has an idea or a proposal on something that can help to mature and integrate drones into the airspace this faa program is a way to incentivize industry to partner with the test site go test validate and build their prototype so that they can get to a point where it could be commercialized or actually moving forward in integration. We've done a lot of work in drone mitigation and counter uas. We've done this extensively with our partners at the University of North Dakota a lot of our federal agencies that have National Security in mind, this is a growing area of interest. We're constantly looking to evaluate how do we safely integrate drones into the airspace system but it's not that far of a stretch to think that whatever I might do that is safe and valuable could also be used for nefarious purposes and that's really what the purpose and goal of of this activity is to see what kinds of systems are out there that can evaluate, we'll call them bad actors or people with nefarious intent, and what would you do in the event of needing to use some kind of technology to take action against that drone. It's not such a high-risk activity for North Dakota but if you start to think about Urban centers you can start to see how it's interest of our national security agencies to consider this and so we in North Dakota have supported this type of activity and this type of testing. Uas traffic management or unmanned traffic management UTM as it's commonly called today in the airspace system we call it ATM which is you know airspace traffic management it is the legacy or traditional way of doing things with existing systems however as drones and unmanned aircraft and Advanced Air Mobility Vehicles start to fly more and more in our skies without a pilot necessarily being on board. We have to consider how does our air traffic system support that kind of activity and UTM is specifically looking at systems that can help automate or communicate between multiple operators operating within the same airspace volumes. This is historically achieved through using air traffic controllers that are managing traffic from aircraft with pilots on board but there especially as we get closer to the surface of the Earth we don't have as many radars out there to be able to track and monitor air traffic and so the UTM concept is looking at what are the various technologies and processes and protocols needed so that whensystems want to fly in our national airspace system they can do it in a safe way they can do it to ensure that we are deconflicting from each other. We really break this down into strategic deconfliction and tactical deconfliction and strategic deconfliction would be making sure that if I'm flying an aircraft that I fly a specific route but maybe the other person who wants to fly in the same area takes off five minutes later and so we never intersect because I'm flying five minutes ahead of that other person. Tactical deconfliction would be looking at radars whether they'd be groundbased or on board actively looking for other traffic in the airspace system once you have those systems how do they talk to each other, how are you managing that type of workflow how are you managing that and and how are you doing it in an automated way that's really kind of at the heart of the UTM concept and so the test site has had a significant history working with NASA, FAA, Department of Defense in looking and testing at these various UTM systems. From that we've also so recently in 2024 we're awarded a program that is called project Ultra and this is really a project that many partners are a part of, specifically the Grand Forks County, Grand Sky, the Grand Forks Air Force Base, the Northern Plains UAS test site, and other other industry partners that are taking this UTM concept but now evaluating it from the perspective of the Department of Defense. When we start to consider the various DOD assets within the United States as well as outside of the United States we want to make sure that their installations and their properties have systems that allow us to seamlessly evaluate and manage both traditional aircraft as well as uas drones and are vehicles into the future no doubt this type of technology drones and vehicles have a lot of opportunity for bringing value to our Department of Defense whether it be bringing logistical payloads whether in the future it is carrying people in a different sense this technology has a lot of opportunity but same problem that we have in the National airspace system. We have to consider how does that traffic integrate inside the airspace and the surrounding area around any air force base or army base or any other Department of Defense property and so you have to look at the logistics behind it the transportation response which is really looking at again what happens if there's a nefarious actor or somebody with malicious intent trying to attack a property and how does autonomy and autonomous systems technology fit into all of this which is a little bit of a leap than where we're at today and so this project Ultra is a program that is sponsored by the Pentagon really looking at North Dakota to be the leader in developing this capability testing this capability and ideally in the future scaling this capability to other parts of the Department of Defense system. With that oh we also have another program that was recently awarded in 2024 which is this Department of Agriculture as you can see this is another project which is very common with us where we have multiple partners and and industry coming to the table to to test capabilities but you'll see here North Dakota State University, Grand Farm, Thales, Isight, and the test site are testing the use of drones and sensors for looking at noxious weeds and other areas of interest with NDSU and so another great capability, a growing capability something that has a lot of opportunity to bring value to the state of North Dakota. As I indicated previously we are now past our 10-year mark as a test site which is really exciting considering when we started this I always like to say that this was really an experiment we didn't know exactly what it was going to take to integrate drones and now am vehicles into the national airspace system and so here we are 10 years later and in fact coming up on 11 years and we're still around we're still bringing value to Industry to the state of North Dakota we are now having to think longer term and plan ahead as the and Industry starts bringing new rules to the table there's going to be new opportunity for working with industry to come up with standards and policy that will help bring a sense of stability and predictability to this industry today it's a little bit still like in the early days of the automobile where people are building things and trying things and some of them will succeed and some of them will fail but as we work with the industry, as we work with the FAA we're learning quickly what does it really take to do this safely and ultimately to help the United States build our entrepreneurs to build businesses that will be successful in North Dakota and in the United States and so the last part of this presentation I'm going to talk about is reallythe vantis program, you know many folks have heard of vantis and understand it to be our Statewide Beyond Visual line of sight program. This is a program that's administered by the Northern Plains UAS test site and it is working with our partners at Thales to bring really the the solution for bringing scalable repeatable Beyond visual line of sight uas operations to North Dakota as well as the rest of the United States. This really has a history as we as a test site we're working with industry we worked we understood really quickly that to do this the right way it wasn't going to be one effort by industry to to bring this forward we talk about shared infrastructure Concepts quite a bit um you'll see in this picture there is a interstate highway, there is a railroad, and there are power lines, and you know this infrastructure all is in the same corridor so you have the road you have the rail you have the power lines if every one of these entities that oversee this particular infrastructure in this case the roadway would be the Department of Transportation. They wanted to invest in using drones to inspect roadway conditions or weather conditions or looking for accidents or other hazards on the roadway it would be a pretty large investment to bring that capability just for the roadway system but if you're going to bring it to the roadway system and you only have to go you know a stones throw away to see the rail why don't we also build a system that lets us see and inspect the rails and so the communications systems, the systems needed to see and avoid other airspace traffic in the area can be applicable to all this infrastructure and that's really at the heart of the concept of vantis is that this is the North Dakota system that brings BVLOS capability and whether you're a road Transportation infrastructure operator, rail operator, electrical infrastructure operator Agriculture and in the future Logistics and passenger carrying we can bring that infrastructure that can be used by all those entities and therefore bring the economies of scale to play so that not any one of these entities is responsible for doing all of the R&D, the development, and the innovation around making this concept into a reality. And so what is really vantis and that's a question we get all the time it's really four large topics. The first one is remote infrastructure. These are as you'll see in the slide surveillance sensors or Radars this is the same thing as any other Air Traffic Control radar the problem today is that air traffic control Radars were designed with traditional Aviation traffic in mind and so they tend to look up and away at higher altitudes. Well some of these use cases for for drones in uas are at lower altitudes and so we have to deploy additional Radars in order to get that kind of coverage closer to the surface of the Earth and you also need radios the ability to command and control the aircraft no different than if you have your cell phone and you're driving on the road your cell phone hops from Tower to Tower to keep that connectivity the whole way. We're talking about the same thing but instead of talking on the phone it is communicating with your drone and so you need to have the infrastructure to allow you to do that you need to have the back haul Data Network here in North Dakota we have stage net which is operated by our information technology department of North Dakota and this is the fiber infrastructure that's already in the ground here in North Dakota so wherever we may place a radar or a radio we can connect that into that fiber network and we can set it up so that it's a secure network that can't be just viewed by anybody and you need to then have an ability to monitor that infrastructure and so in the bottom right part of the screen you'll see the mission network Operation Center, the MNOC as we commonly call it, it's at the MNOC where all of these sensors are monitored for health. It's one thing to have a radar out there and and spinning and collecting data to see and avoid other aircraft but how do you know that it's operating at the level you needed to operate to support safe flight and that's what's happening at the MNOC is we have what we call performance requirements designed for all of the infrastructure on the system and if any one of these pieces or equipment or processes are not operating as expected this is where it is alerted at the mission network operations center and then we can take action to to deal with whatever concern may be happening or quite simply just land the aircraft to make sure that we're not creating additional risk in the airspace system and in the bottom left ultimately the the final piece of this is the actual aircraft itself the uas and in the future a advanced air Mobility Vehicles you need to have an aircraft that is operating in a safe way and just like in traditional Aviation we have all different kinds of aircraft from smaller for passenger training type aircraft all the way to large commercial operations in the future we'll see uas and amv vehicles of similar SKuh you know a scale of different types of aircraft that will need to be accommodated on this network and so part of vantis is also determining what are the requirements with the aircraft what does every aircraft that's operating on a system like this need and you know from its operational performance capability its communication and ultimately what kind of standards or certification are we going to be needing in the future for aircraft to operate in a BVLOS capacity so vantis has been going on for for quite a while it was funded originally in in 2019 with its initial investment and it has been achieving various milestones. Ultimately as a state we went through a process where we knew as a state of North Dakota we could come up with the concept and the requirements for this kind of system but we needed industry to bring forth the requisite technology to actually execute on this and so we went through a procurement process and that's what led us to our partnership with Thales today and Thales is the partner that we're moving forward with in terms of them bringing all of their engineering expertise, their radar expertise, their systems expertise that actually makes this happen and so we would not be able to achieve this without our partner and as we have continued to grow and develop the vantis network. Vantis has achieved some of the the firsts in the nation we've you know we've received Beyond visual line of sight approvals from the FAA using the actual system as a what we call an electronic observer so instead of a pilot on board in the aircraft seeing and avoiding we have somebody sitting in front of a screen who is looking for traffic and working with the pilot to remain well clear of other traffic in the airspace system. This type of concept has been done through very stepping stones in the past but vantis really brought forth a cohesive scalable way of doing it and we're confident that the approvals that we've received bring scalability to other parts of North Dakota and the US when other states and entities want to have a Vantis like system in their area. The MNOC I've talked a little bit about that before what you see on the left side of the slide is actually an actual screenshot of what the screens look like inside the MNOC there's various screens that give you know operator, the system operators an idea of the health and status of the system and then you'll see on the right side is just the actual pictures of the radar systems that can be deployed to support vantis and then the bottom of the screen is the remote pilot traffic we call HMI this is the type of screen that a pilot an electronic Observer would be looking at so that they can see which targets or aircraft are flying in the area and they can operate their own aircraft to make sure that they're staying well clear per faa rules and regulations. Vantis today we've developed a key site out in Williston, Watford City area we're bringing a system online in the Grand Forks region and as you can see here is a notional scaling map of what this could look like in North Dakota. We call it the Statewide system but much like cellular technology will likely scale to support wherever the use cases are and so we'll likely see vantis along infrastructure corridors again, where your highways your rail your electrical infrastructure your pipeline infrastructure are all collocated. We are also one of the first entities outside of the federal government to receive an agreement with the FAA to actually get the current FAA radar system brought to vantis and so instead of us just deploying Radars to look for air traffic we want to ingest existing Air Traffic Control Radars into our system. There's already coverage in North Dakota there's coverage in other parts of the United States. Doing this is a way to efficiently use our resources in North Dakota. No need to bring on radars where there's already radar coverage from an existing FAA radar, let's look at what they have and then we can augment with our own radars and so just recently we were announced as the first entity outside of the federal government to receive this agreement with the FAA and that's one step towards growing the capability and and bringing scalability meaning if we can get the North Dakota Radars then what does it look like to bring other Radars into the system that bring this capability to other parts of the United States and with that I will stop there. That's again, I'll reiterate, just a scratch the level surface of what the test site does on a day-to-day basis. Thank you for your your time and attention and listening to the presentation there's a lot more that we could look into so feel free to reach out to me you know as you can here my contact info by the way is TJWoods@nd.gov send me an email I'd love to connect with you and chat further. I also want to let you know that we have another one of these Beyond The Buzz events coming up on December 10th at 11 A.M central time. One of the things that as a test site we really value our partnership with the FAA, we couldn't do what we do without the Federal Aviation Administration and so I'm pleased to announce that we're actually going to have a couple of our FAA program friends with us. Pamela Gomez and Sabrina Saunders Haj these two are program managers inside the FAA They're directors actually who oversee the test site program, the Beyond program, with the FAA these programs are really important to to the state of North Dakota and to the Northern Plains UAS test site for getting done what we need to get done for our industry Partners. So with that I again reiterate December 10th at 11:00 a.m. Central Time please join us and I look forward to that presentation. Thank you for your time today