The Sense & Avoid (SAA) Science and Research Panel (SRP), chartered by the Unmanned Warfare office in the Office of Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (AT&L) within the Office of the Secretary Of Defense, held the first of what will prove to be many Open Industry Days on October 26-27, 2011 at the MIT/LL facilities located in Burlington, MA. The Industry Day attracted 120 participants, and was deemed a huge success by the two SAA SRP Co-Chairs: Dr. Steve Cook from Mitre, and Doug Davis from NMSU/PSL.
This particular Industry Day was focused on the current State-of-the-Art around SAA Displays and SAA Collision Avoidance Algorithms. The SRP, through OSD, issued a “Request for Information” (RFI) requesting any interested company to present their ongoing work in these two critical areas. According to the Co-Chairs, the response “was overwhelming, and the information shared was outstanding.” What had been planned for a one-day event quickly turned into a need to have two full days of briefings. The SRP was impressed with the ongoing activities in both areas.
The SRP’s primary purpose is to promote partnerships between the Department of Defense (DoD) and the broader academic and science community on UAS NAS Integration research and science initiatives. These partnerships are critical to SAA research and science efforts to positively inform and influence OSD strategic SAA decisions. The SRP intends, as a way of implementing this direction, to survey the technology issues surrounding the SAA problem set, and to inform AT&L about the Science and Research being conducted or needing to be conducted to accelerate the resolution of the SAA Technology issues.
In addition to Industry days, the SRP is also conducting workshops on specific issues such as Certification of Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Radar Cross-section capabilities, and Quantified Risks. For these and other workshops, the SRP will invite Industry leaders in each subject by name, on an as needed basis.
Source: Press Release