With its sights set on expanding its beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) infrastructure across the country, Vantis recently signed a long-term agreement to house an operations center at the Grand Sky business and aviation park in western North Dakota, providing unmanned aerial system (UAS) operators and customers from across industries access to monitoring, data collection, and verification, lowering the barrier to entry for federal approval.

 

Seattle-based Wibotic last week launched a software package to help customers manage the increasingly complex array of tasks necessary to keep vehicles in growing unmanned fleets charged and ready to perform.    The software, called Commander, offers constant, at-a-glance awareness of all vehicles through a user-friendly interface, said CEO and co-founder Ben Waters. Users will be able to assess quickly how soon vehicles need to be charged, as well as to gather data on things like power usage and battery performance over time – to inform future scheduling and purchasing decisions.  “It might be used for a single vehicle on a single site, or a single vehicle on hundreds of sites, or it could be used for hundreds of vehicles on one site,” Waters said. 

Jamming. Spoofing. Interference from the landscape or cityscape. Interference from other flight equipment. Such snarls arise often enough with satellite signals to make it clear: Routine UAS flight beyond the line of sight (BLOS) will likely never happen with traditional GPS technology alone. To assure safe travel over long distances, unmanned aircraft systems need greater capability to ensure accurate positioning and routing.