PrecisionHawk has been awarded two patents for technologies it has developed for UAS traffic management (UTM).

Known as the ‘Automated Unmanned Air Traffic Control System,’ the patents are designed to enable collision avoidance between drones and manned aircraft, which is achieved by transmitting real-time flight data from drones to a UTM server prior to and while in-flight.

According to PrecisionHawk, the first patent is for technology that allows drones to send real-time telemetry to flight servers to avoid collisions while in the air. The second patent helps drone operators avoid collisions by transmitting their flight plan to a traffic management server prior to a flight to see if there is a potential for flight conflicts. The traffic management server receives similar data for other drones and manned aircraft, and if there is potential for collision, the traffic management server sends an alert to the drone so the operator can adjust the flight plan.

An early pioneer in the UTM space, PrecisionHawk introduced the Low Altitude Tracking and Avoidance System (LATAS) in 2015. Using real-time flight data transmission based on existing worldwide cellular networks, LATAS was designed to provide flight planning, tracking, and avoidance for every drone in the sky.

PrecisionHawk says that it researched and developed LATAS to show that integrating drones into the National Airspace (NAS) could be done safely, which would enable broad drone operations.

“It’s clear that the more you know about the real-time environment you’re operating in, the more safely and efficiently you can operate,” says Dr. Allison Ferguson, PrecisionHawk director, Airspace Research.

“The more important question is how does a drone operator reliably get that situational awareness? What information is needed and when? LATAS was a key enabling technology for the Pathfinder efforts, which were aimed at determining answers to precisely those questions.”

According to PrecisionHawk, a “robust, automated” UTM system must be in place to not only help realize the humanitarian and economic benefits of drone technology in a safe and secure manner, but to also handle the expected traffic with remote identification to identify UAS. With this in mind, PrecisionHawk says that these patents will “contribute to the efforts to bring a safe, secure UAS traffic control system online.”