40 July’s shooting of a supermarket’s delivery uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) in Texas, USA, highlights the challenges of operating them beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). They have to coordinate with other delivery craft, blue light UAVs used for rescue or surveillance missions, and even crewed helicopters and light aircraft that stray into the corridors used for deliveries. Several companies are running smallscale delivery services with BVLOS, often with a remote operator handling 20 UAVs, mostly under a regulatory waiver under Part 107 of the US regulations, with operations up to an altitude of 400 ft. The challenge is to scale up to tens of thousands of craft with standard operating procedures, or Part 108, which is expected before winter of this year and will allow rule-based mission plans, some completely autonomous. There are many technologies, from radar to cloud, that are expected to enable the rollout of largescale Uncrewed Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) systems from 2025. This means the design of an UAV is not just about the airframe and the motors, but also the sense and avoid systems, and wider coordination for BVLOS operations with UTM systems. The next-generation delivery UAVs include specific technologies approved by regulators for UTM. Several UAV developers include cloud services to manage their UAVs, but there is also a need to link them to the wider UTM systems of third parties. These have a range of technologies, from static and portable radar to monitor air corridors to GNSS satellite-positioning sensors on the aircraft, and even imaging or acoustic onboard sensors that can ‘see’ or ‘hear’ approaching aircraft. Today’s UAV designs require sense and avoid systems, and broader links with UTM systems for beyond line-of-sight operations, Nick Flaherty reports The wider picture August/September 2024 | Uncrewed Systems Technology
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