As more drones take to the skies in Nevada, which is home to one of only six of the country’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Unmanned Autonomous Systems (UAS) Designated Test Sites, officials are trying to figure out how to keep them all from crashing into each other. While the FAA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) certainly envision a future where UAS (or drones) perform all sorts of jobs and functions for society, the FAA, NASA and the industry as a whole, need to figure out how to do this safety in the national airspace. Chris Walach, Director of the Nevada FAA UAS Test Site, said, “We are testing all kinds of conditions out there, from package delivery to aerial surveys, to inspections, to damage control.” But a fleet of package delivery drones need a whole new map of the sky –so a group of drone experts tested a new system in Nevada with three drones flying at once. The idea behind the test was to see if varying the altitude would work to keep the drones away from each other during a package delivery operation. Two of the drones circled at different altitudes while the other drone made a package delivery onto a target. NASA Associate Project Manager for the Safe Autonomous Systems program, Tom Prevot, said, “Our next step is going to be to look at suburban operations, maybe closer to airports, where the density gets higher, where there’s new requirements, and initial delivery. And then we’ll actually continue onto the most complex ones –real urban environments.” With the success of this research, Nevada’s researchers will move onto the next stage of testing which includes testing drone flights at longer distances, beyond visual line of sight. That testing is planned for January 2018.

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