FutureFlight
NASA and Reliable Robotics Partner on UAS Safety
Autonomous aviation company Reliable Robotics partners with NASA to improve safety of remotely-piloted aircraft in the National Airspace System.
A Reliable Robotics Cessna Grand Caravan is pictured in flight
Reliable Robotics is working to certify its remote-piloting capabilities in a modified Cessna 208 Caravan. (Photo: Reliable Robotics)

Reliable Robotics has teamed with NASA to improve the safety of remotely-piloted aircraft in the National Airspace System using FAA primary surveillance radar (PSR) data. Specifically, the partners wanted to explore the use of existing radar infrastructure for automated detect-and-avoid (DAA) systems on board autonomous aircraft. 

Reliable Robotics is a California company developing “drop-in” autonomy kits to give legacy aircraft remote-piloting capabilities. Together with NASA, Reliable Robotics conducted a flight-test campaign in California using two of its experimental aircraft. During the flight tests, Reliable Robotics coordinated multiple encounters between the two aircraft while the FAA’s ground-based radars and commercial air-to-air radars tracked the flights and collected data.