Issue 37 Unmanned Systems Technology April/May 2021 Einride next-gen Pod l Battery technology l Dive Technologies AUV-Kit l UGVs insight l Vanguard EFI/ETC vee twins l Icarus Swarms l Transponders l Sonobot 5 l IDEX 2021 report

76 F or many years now, aviation administrations and UAS companies have been discussing how to safely integrate unmanned systems into national airspaces. That has led to significant progress in defining the technological standards and requirements that UAV transponders must be certified to, for the aircraft to be legally permitted to fly in certain airspaces. The standards have been developed with the additional considerations that common mechanisms for traffic collision avoidance systems (TCASs), airborne collision avoidance systems (ACASs) and roadmaps for future flight control methods such as swarming should also be developed. Establishing the standards now will ensure that UAV manufacturers and end-users will have consistent and logical rules and components. The recently published rules on UAS remote identification, for example, require wi-fi or Bluetooth transmissions of identification codes, location, altitude, velocity, timing and other mission information. However, the rules apply largely to operations below 400 ft (122 m) and depend on ground-based infrastructure, so they fall short of dictating the requirements for safety and traffic autonomy among the higher-altitude BVLOS applications that manufacturers and operators of high-end UAVs are seeking. The development of standards for UAV transponders has allowed some important innovations in their capabilities. Rory Jackson reports Signal flair April/May 2021 | Unmanned Systems Technology The regulations and capabilities of UAS transponders are evolving to better enable integration of UAVs into national airspaces where commercial and general aviators operate (Photo: Shutterstock/Alexandre Rotenberg)