The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic control, certification of personnel and aircraft, setting standards for airports, and protection of U.S. assets during the launch or re-entry of commercial space vehicles. Powers over neighboring international waters were delegated to the FAA by authority of the International Civil Aviation Organization.
The Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) are rules prescribed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) governing all aviation activities in the United States. The FARs comprise Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). A wide variety of activities are regulated, such as aircraft design and maintenance, typical airline flights, pilot training activities, hot-air ballooning, lighter-than-air aircraft, man-made structure heights, obstruction lighting and marking, model rocket launches, commercial space operations, model aircraft operations, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and kite flying. The rules are designed to promote safe aviation, protecting pilots, flight attendants, passengers and the general public from unnecessary risk.
The Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) is a joint research project between the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), along with local airports and aviation authorities. It is designed to facilitate transportation between small General Aviation airports using small aircraft as an alternative to traditional airline travel.
Access 5 was a national project run by NASA in collaboration with industry, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the United States Department of Defense (DoD), in order to introduce high altitude, long endurance (HALE) remotely operated aircraft (ROA) for routine flights in the National Airspace System (NAS). It was the first project in the United States to formally attempt to integrated unmanned aircraft into the national airspace system (NAS). The primary objective was to open up airspace for commercial unmanned aviation. Access 5 commenced in May 2004 and was slated to run for five years. The project received initial funding in the amount of $101M from NASA and guarantees of support from the ROA industry. It was managed out of Dryden Flight Research Center. The program was managed by Jeff Bauer out of NASA Dryden and R. Scott Dann, a General Atomics program manager who filled the role of industry director. R. Scott Dann was also the founder and first president of the UAV National Industry Team (UNITE). A good portion of the leadership on the Access 5 program were involved in the NASA ERAST program, another pioneering program in UAS development.
A personal air vehicle (PAV) is a proposed type of aircraft providing on-demand aviation services.
The Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology, or ERAST program was a NASA program to develop cost-effective, slow-flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that can perform long-duration science missions at altitudes above 60,000 ft (18,000 m). The project included a number of technology development programs conducted by the joint NASA-industry ERAST Alliance. The project was formally terminated in 2003.
The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) is an ongoing United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) project to modernize the National Airspace System (NAS). The FAA began work on NextGen improvements in 2007 and plans to finish the final implementation segment by 2030. The goals of the modernization include using new technologies and procedures to increase the safety, efficiency, capacity, access, flexibility, predictability, and resilience of the NAS while reducing the environmental impact of aviation.
The Air Traffic Organization (ATO) is an air navigation service provider in the United States of America. The ATO is the operational division of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Amazon Prime Air, or simply Prime Air, is a drone delivery service operated by Amazon. The service uses delivery drones to autonomously fly individual packages to customers, and launched in 2022.
Kongsberg Geospatial is a Situational Awareness and Geospatial Visualization software company located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1992 as Gallium Visual Systems Inc. and purchased in 2006 by Norwegian Defence firm Kongsberg Gruppen. It currently operates as a subsidiary of Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and in 2012, officially changed its name to Kongsberg Gallium Ltd. In 2016, the company changed its name again to Kongsberg Geospatial to better reflect its focus on geospatial software solutions..
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, is generally regulated by the civil aviation authority of the country. Nevertheless, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) began exploring the use of drone technology as far back as 2005, which resulted in a 2011 report. France was among the first countries to set a national framework based on this report and larger aviation bodies such as the FAA and the EASA quickly followed suit, which eventually led to influential regulations such as Part 107 and Regulation (EU) 2019/947. As of January 2022, several countries are working on new regulations, ranging from BVLOS operations to UTM activities, which include the US, the EU, India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia among others.
The Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) is one of five mission directorates within NASA, the other four being the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, the Space Operations Mission Directorate, the Science Mission Directorate, and the Space Technology Mission Directorate. The ARMD is responsible for NASA's aeronautical research, which benefits the commercial, military, and general aviation sectors. The current NASA associate administrator heading ARMD is Robert A. Pearce who has held the position since 2019.
Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is the use of small, highly automated aircraft to carry passengers or cargo at lower altitudes in urban and suburban areas which have been developed in response to traffic congestion. It usually refers to existing and emerging technologies such as traditional helicopters, vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft (VTOL), electrically propelled, vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft (eVTOL), and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These aircraft are characterized by the use of multiple electric-powered rotors or fans for lift and propulsion, along with fly-by-wire systems to control them. Inventors have explored urban air mobility concepts since the early days of powered flight. However, advances in materials, computerized flight controls, batteries and electric motors improved innovation and designs beginning in the late 2010s. Most UAM proponents envision that the aircraft will be owned and operated by professional operators, as with taxis, rather than by private individuals.
PrecisionHawk is a commercial drone and data company. Founded in 2010, PrecisionHawk is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina with another global office in Toronto, Canada and satellite offices around the world. PrecisionHawk is a manufacturer of drones (Lancaster) and has more recently focused heavily on developing software for aerial data analysis (DataMapper) and drone safety systems (LATAS). PrecisionHawk is a member of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration Pathfinder Initiative and the NASA UTM Program. An angel investor in the company, Bob Young, founder of Red Hat, became CEO in August 2015. In August 2016, PrecisionHawk became the first U.S. company to receive an FAA exemption to commercially fly drones beyond the operator's visual line of sight.
Unmanned aircraft system traffic management (UTM) is an air traffic management ecosystem under development for autonomously controlled operations of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) by the FAA, NASA, other federal partner agencies, and industry. They are collaboratively exploring concepts of operation, data exchange requirements, and a supporting framework to enable multiple UAS operations beyond visual line-of-sight at altitudes under 400 ft above ground level in airspace where FAA air traffic services are not provided.
Applied Aeronautics is a commercial drone manufacturer. Founded in 2014, Applied Aeronautics is headquartered in Austin, Texas. Applied Aeronautics is a manufacturer of affordable drones and drone related accessories for commercial and government customers. Their flagship product is the Albatross, an electric, long-range, fixed wing UAV.
Unifly is a European software company that provides a platform for drone telematics services for unmanned traffic management. The company provides mapping and location data to connect authorities with pilots for the safe integration of drones into the airspace and unmanned aviation. The company was a wholly owned subsidiary of VITO until a corporate spin-off in 2015. Unifly is headquartered in Antwerp, Belgium.
Operation Zenith was a demonstration of UAV and ATM integration held at Manchester Airport on November 21, 2018. The event aimed to illustrate that "drones can be flown safely alongside manned aircraft in controlled airspace". A total of eight scenarios were demonstrated in real-time, including On Airfield Delivery, Beyond Visual Line-Of-Sight (BVLOS) Infrastructure Inspection, and Commercial VLOS Operations.
Xwing is an autonomous aircraft company founded in 2016, initially focusing on cargo operations.
Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) is an overarching term that combines both Urban Air Mobility (UAM), which involves transporting persons and cargo above the traffic within a city, and Regional Air Mobility (RAM) which is focused more on connecting suburbs, villages and small towns in the countryside as well as islands or communities separated by mountainous regions and rivers.
