Vigilant Aerospace CEO Kraettli L. Epperson Moderates Detect-and-Avoid Panel At AUVSI XPONENTIAL 2021

I’m Kraettli Epperson, CEO of Vigilant Aerospace, and I’m here today moderating our industry panel on detect-and-avoid systems for beyond visual line-of-sight commercial uncrewed aircraft systems at AUVSI XPONENTIAL 2021. I’m grateful to be leading this panel on technologies around detect-and-avoid.

I’m joined by two co-panelists, and I appreciate their participation.

Mo Hartney is the Director of Applications Engineering at Echodyne Corporation. Echodyne produces portable radar systems, and we are looking forward to hearing more about their work during this panel. I have seen Mo working in the field and have had the opportunity to work with Echodyne, so we are glad to have them here today.

We also have Dr. Cathy Cahill with us. She is the Director of ACUASI, the Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She is also the CEO of the Pan-Pacific UAS Test Range Complex, one of the FAA’s recognized UAS test sites. Cathy leads one of the top UAS research centers in the world, and we are glad to have her here. She has a number of interesting projects underway, and I’m sure she will tell us more about those during the panel.

I’m going to ask our panelists to make brief presentations. We have forty-five minutes.

We are going to begin by talking briefly about the problem and why detect-and-avoid is so important to the industry. Then I’m going to ask each panelist to provide some background on their experience, their organizations, and the projects and technologies they are working on.

I’ll start with a short presentation about Vigilant Aerospace. After that, we will have time for questions and answers. There are several important themes and topics we can cover today, many of which will likely prompt questions from the presentations. Some of the topics we have queued up include the different components of a detect-and-avoid system, some of the emerging standards and technologies, and the developments that are pushing the industry and detect-and-avoid forward.

That will get us started, and then we will try to leave plenty of time for Q&A.

Talking a little bit about the problem, I did not really introduce myself fully. I’m Kraettli Epperson, CEO of Vigilant Aerospace, and we develop software based on NASA patents for integrating and building full detect-and-avoid systems using software along with a variety of sensors and data inputs. I’ll talk more about that in a moment.

I think everyone listening to this probably understands why detect-and-avoid systems are so critical to the industry right now. Beyond visual line-of-sight flight of unmanned aircraft requires the ability to detect and avoid other aircraft. This is absolutely critical. These systems must be able to detect and avoid crewed aircraft, especially those without transponders, which we would call non-cooperative air traffic. That is especially important and one reason this is a complex problem that requires a great deal of data.

Because these systems are safety-critical, they must be trustworthy and well tested. That means different things in different contexts, but it is emerging as a very important part of this process.

We also know that, as the industry develops, onboard detect-and-avoid is going to be very important to make long-range beyond visual line-of-sight flight practical and economical. [Transcript unclear.] These systems are an important part of an autonomy strategy, but they can be complex and expensive because of some of the technologies involved. That is one reason the partnerships we are going to talk about during this panel are so important to the development of this technology.

The final thing I’ll say by way of introduction is that the relevant technologies, regulations, and everything that goes with detect-and-avoid systems are emerging right now. That is why this panel is especially timely for the industry.

A little about our background. I’m just going to do a couple of slides here about Vigilant Aerospace.

We produce a family of products called FlightHorizon. This diagram shows how the system works. It is safety software, and we also do the systems integration of hardware into that software. It is designed either for individual UAS pilots or for airspace managers. It provides situational awareness, traffic display, and active avoidance, so it addresses the avoidance portion of detect-and-avoid.

It is based on NASA patents that we have licensed from NASA Armstrong, and it performs multi-sensor correlation. That is an important function. It predicts conflicts, issues warnings, and provides specific avoidance commands either to the pilot or directly to the autopilot.

This image gives a quick idea of what the software is doing, whether it is displaying information or sending it to the autopilot.

In the center, you have the white aircraft, which is your own aircraft. Around it is a yellow ring representing the mandated well-clear distance from other air traffic, and the system is constantly monitoring that. It is constantly predicting where other detected air traffic may be going, and then it determines whether there is a potential conflict. If there is, it provides a warning and then an efficient avoidance maneuver to prevent that conflict.

You can see here that it has detected a potential conflict and is providing an avoidance maneuver, shown as the green line, while also displaying and communicating avoidance information to the operator.

We have three products.

One is FlightHorizon COMMANDER, which is our ground-based system for droneports, airparks, or any location where you may have a larger radar and access to online data.

Another is FlightHorizon PRO, which is our portable product for use with portable radars and other portable receivers.

We are also glad to talk about FlightHorizon PILOT, which is our onboard system. It uses radar, ADS-B in, and a connection to the autopilot to provide these services onboard while being supervised from the ground.

Very briefly, I want to mention a few of the projects we have worked on. I will not go through all of them, but I will say that we have worked closely with NASA, particularly NASA Armstrong. Our products have been used in both unmanned and crewed aircraft, and the NASA supersonic program has used our system.

We have also participated in the FAA Integration Pilot Program with both ACUASI and the Northern Plains UAS Test Site in North Dakota. That has been very productive for us.

We have also partnered with the Unmanned Systems Research Institute at Oklahoma State University, where we recently completed a radar integration and testing project.

As for our new and upcoming projects, these are the ones we are especially focused on right now. We are in the middle of an FAA research and development contract in which we are testing a variety of sensors and systems to develop detect-and-avoid systems. That has been a strong project, and we have partnered with ACUASI on it. We are in the middle of that work right now.

We also plan to roll out our COMMANDER system at the Northern Plains UAS Test Site. We have recently joined the ACUASI BEYOND program, and we are looking at additional testing and projects there. We are part of the NASA ULI WINDMAP project, which brings wind hazard data into avoidance systems like ours. We also have ongoing work with NASA.

So that is a little background about us. I have a couple of photos here. This is part of the team working near Fairbanks with the ACUASI team to conduct testing across a variety of systems.

They are going to be doing this again in a couple of weeks. This image shows an Echodyne radar onboard an ACUASI UAF drone with our software monitoring traffic and providing detect-and-avoid services. It is a good example of how these systems and partnerships come together.

All right, I am going to hand the presentation over to Mo and let her tell you a little more. Mo, I am going to mute myself, and you can just tell me when you want me to advance the slides.