UAS consulting company Apex Unmanned and technology company RelmaTech have agreed to collaborate on the promotion of the benefits that UAS Remote Identification and tracking technologies can offer.

Apex Unmanned and RelmaTech are partners on the Nevada team that NASA recently selected to execute its NASA Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) Technical Capability Level (TCL) 4 program. Under the leadership of the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems (NIAS), the Nevada UAS Test Site was selected to execute TCL4 through a competitive process with six other states.

Under the TCL4 program, UAS will fly in “higher-density urban areas” for tasks such as newsgathering, package delivery, and large-scale contingency mitigation. This NASA demonstration, which will take place over several months in downtown Reno, Nevada in May and June, will be the first time in U.S. Aviation history that such flights will be conducted in a metropolitan area under beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) conditions.

“The definition of Remote Identification is often misunderstood to only help identify the drone location and its operator. Remote Identification technology could also mitigate concerns of collision, privacy, law enforcement, and aid counter-UAS response,” explains Greg White, CEO of Apex Unmanned.

“We strongly support the testing of Remote Identification technology solutions prior to an FAA rulemaking on Remote ID, and the NASA TCL4 test program in Reno serves an ideal environment to do this.”

Apex Unmanned is helping NIAS by supporting the development of Remote ID capabilities for TCL-4, while RelmaTech is one of just a few international companies invited to partner with NIAS on the NASA TCL4 program.

“As technology leaders in the UTM field, our innovative, practical, low cost and robust solutions have been designed and developed to provide UAS operators with a suite of features that go far beyond just anticipating future regulatory requirements for Remote Identification and tracking,” says Philip Hall, Co-Founder and CEO of RelmaTech.

“Our dual-capable Secure Integrated Airspace Management (SIAM) system, which has both network and broadcast Remote ID and tracking capabilities, enables UAS operators employing our technology to achieve significant safety and productivity improvements in their fleet operations.”

Apex Unmanned and RelmaTech say that they will also promote the benefits of having onboard Remote ID and tracking capabilities to UAS operators.