Echodyne, the manufacturer of innovative, high-performance radars for government and commercial markets, announced today that its EchoGuard radar played a key airspace safety role in the successful completion of the FAA UTM Pilot Program by the Northern Plains UAS Test Site (NPUASTS). The FAA continues to work with NASA, the UAS test sites, and commercial companies to operationalize the UAS Traffic Management concept and integrate UAS into the National Airspace System (NAS) safely and effectively. 

 

"We are thrilled to be part of the Northern Plains' UTM Pilot Program," said Eben Frankenberg, CEO of Echodyne. "The Northern Plains team executed challenging UAS missions as part of the pilot program. We value the opportunity to demonstrate our radars' performance in demanding scenarios with government and industry stakeholders and are pleased we continue to perform well in these test environments." 

 

For the program, Echodyne's ground-based radars were integrated into Simulyze's situational awareness platform for comprehensive airspace management. The radars supported beyond visual line of site (BVLOS) operations in the Grand Forks urban area and the rural environment of Thompson for challenging UAS use cases such as traffic monitoring, emergency response, and agricultural operations. For several of the scenarios, clearing the airspace of traffic involved both UTM messaging and verification through Echodyne's ground-based radars. 

 

"As an official FAA program, we sought to integrate high quality sensors and technologies in order to demonstrate the viability of UTM in an operational system," said Chris Theisen from NPUASTS. "The Echodyne radars were great sensors to have in the project and performed well in all scenarios."