Simulyze Concludes Support of NASA's Third Nationwide Test of Its UAS Traffic Management Platform, Begins Work on FAA's Integrated Pilot Program

RESTON, Va., Nov. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Simulyze, Inc., a leading provider of operational intelligence (OI) technology and applications that empower both federal and commercial organizations, announced it has completed its deployment of its Mission InsightTM (OI) application during NASA's Technical Capability Level 3 (TCL 3) National Campaign testing of its UAS traffic management (UTM) research platform. Simulyze is continuing to advance its Mission Insight platform to support UTM as it participates with NASA in its TCL 4 development program. Simulyze also announced that it will serve as a UAS Service Supplier (USS) for two Integration Pilot Program (IPP) projects awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

NASA's Technical Capability Level tests are advancing research of prototype technologies for a national UTM system that could develop airspace integration requirements for enabling safe, efficient low-altitude operations by drones. The TCL 3 National Campaign, held from March-June 2018, focused on testing technologies that maintain safe spacing between cooperative and non-cooperative UAS over moderately populated areas. TCL 4 will be held in April-May 2019. FAA's UAS test sites are in the process of developing proposals for TCL 4 while NASA is conducting UAS Service Supplier (USS) spiral development simulation exercises to support the TCL 4 exercise. Simulyze is one of the eight remaining USS vendors able to support TCL 4.

FAA's IPP is a first-of-its-kind program that has approved state, local, and tribal governments to conduct complex drone operations in 10 locations nationwide as part of an effort to expand commercial UAS operations and help the FAA determine how to safely integrate drones into the U.S. airspace.

Simulyze's Mission Insight enterprise-level solution processes and analyzes large streams of data from disparate sources and integrates and visualizes all aspects of multiple flight operations in a single, customized graphical interface. It ultimately provides UAS operators with situational awareness and a common operating picture for safe and efficient drone operations.

"As the only UAS service provider who has worked with all build versions of NASA's UTM software, we're proud to continue supporting NASA's UAS traffic management research and our support to the Alaska and North Dakota UAS test sites," said Kevin Gallagher, president and CEO of Simulyze. "And, we're excited to continue our partnerships in Alaska and North Dakota in the FAA's new Integrated Pilot Program, where we'll be working with state and local governments and the FAA to advance the path forward for integrating safe and efficient commercial drone operations into our nation's airspace."

NASA Technical Capability Level 3

During TCL 3, the Alaska Center for UAS Integration (ACUASI), the lead organization for the Pan-Pacific UAS Test Range Complex, in Fairbanks, Alaska and the Northern Plains UAS Test Site (NPUASTS) in Grand Forks, North Dakota used Simulyze's Mission Insight application as a traffic management system and workflow tool to submit flight plans, monitor aircraft status and telemetry, activate flights, transmit aircraft position data to NASA's UTM research platform and monitor other surveillance information.

Simulyze will continue to support the FAA's UAS test sites in NASA's TCL 4 exercise and the pending FAA UTM Pilot Program. Simulyze has a Space Act Agreement with NASA in support of its UTM that runs through December 2019. The company's partnership with NASA's Ames Research Center is focused on the research and development of a UTM system to enable and support safe and effective UAS operations.

FAA Integrated Pilot Program

The FAA's IPP will help the USDOT and the FAA tackle the most significant challenges in integrating drones into the NAS while reducing risks to public safety and security, and will contribute to new rules that allow more complex low-altitude operations. The ten pilot projects announced in May 2018 will evaluate a host of operational concepts, including night operations, flights over people and beyond the pilot's line of sight, package delivery, detect-and-avoid technologies and the reliability and security of data links between pilot and aircraft. Fields that could see immediate opportunities from the program include commerce, photography, emergency management, agricultural support and infrastructure inspections.

Competing with 200 businesses that submitted a total of 149 IPP project applications of which 10 were selected by the FAA, Simulyze was chosen to serve as a UAS Service Supplier for two awarded proposals:

• North Dakota Department of Transportation, Bismarck, N.D.: This test project will include a wide variety of diverse operations that incorporate advanced technologies that seek to expand UAS operations at night and beyond visual line of sight. Operations will be in multiple types of airspaces ranging from rural to urban areas and will explore applications relating to linear infrastructure inspections, crop health monitoring, media reporting and emergency response.
• University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska: This test project will use enabling technologies that include collision avoidance, detect and avoid day and night, ADS-B, differential GPS, satellite services, infrared imaging and UTM. Operations will primarily focus on pipeline inspection and surveying in remote areas and harsh climatic conditions.

The IPP projects are underway and will be completed by September 2020.

About Simulyze:
Simulyze, Inc. is a leading provider of operational intelligence (OI) technology and applications that empower both federal and commercial organizations to make better, more strategic decisions in real-time. Built on its OI platform, Simulyze's flagship product, Mission Insight™, is the industry's leading commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) application that makes complete situational awareness easy to attain and easy to deploy. It processes and analyzes large streams of data from disparate sources to provide air, land and sea operators, commanders and managers with a common operating picture (COP) in a customized graphical interface. Since 2000, Simulyze's OI technology has been deployed across numerous organizations worldwide, including the Department of Defense, the U.S. Intelligence Community, the Department of Homeland Security and commercial UAS applications. For more information, visit http://www.simulyze.com and follow on Twitter: @Simulyze.

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