Meet the IPP Sites: Collaboration plays integral role in North Dakota DOT's IPP efforts

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When the UAS IPP was initially announced over a year ago, governments, municipalities and companies across the United States envisioned conducting landmark UAS operations in an effort to push the industry forward and make this technology a regular part of society. 

One of the entities with interest in participating in the program was the North Dakota Department of Transportation (NDDOT), which initiated a conversation with the Northern Plains UAS Test Site — located in Grand Forks — to collaborate on the pursuit of this endeavor. 

“We felt it would be a stronger project pulling in key stakeholders across the state,” Russ Buchholz, UAS integration program administrator at NDDOT, tells Unmanned Systems. 

A collaborative approach proved to be the right one, as NDDOT was selected as one of the 10 participants for the program in May 2018. For NDDOT, this was the first of many collaborative approaches that it would take under the UAS IPP, with the next collaborative effort resulting in NDDOT’s partners receiving a landmark waiver from the FAA for UAS operations over people. 

Flights over people

In Sept. 2018, NDDOT, along with the Northern Plains UAS Test Site and several other partners, successfully completed its first public mission under the UAS IPP. Two small UAS, one representing CNN and the other representing the Cass County Sheriff’s Office, flew simultaneously within a Class D airspace over a large mass of people during a tailgating event before the North Dakota State University football game at the FargoDome in Fargo, North Dakota, providing the media and law enforcement with “important, real-time footage.”

The flights were a result of North Dakota UAS operator Botlink receiving the first FAA waiver for flight over people with a parachute system. Under the waiver, Botlink was given permission to use ParaZero’s SafeAir System on a DJI Phantom 4 to perform missions for local law enforcement and generate media content as well. 

Getting this waiver required several weeks’ worth of collaborations between various entities, according to Botlink’s CEO Terri Zimmerman. This collaborative effort involved providing a technical overview of plans and conducting a technical demonstration of the product and planned flights for the FAA, which came out to Fargo to view these efforts. 

Following the overview and technical demonstration, ongoing meetings with the FAA were held, to get the administration’s perspective on what it thought was important for these operations to be successful. The NDDOT team spent several weeks putting together information on these operations for the FAA, and also had to demonstrate command and control of UAS, as well as Part 107 knowledge and knowledge on safety measures. 

After showing test results using the parachute, the NDDOT team had more discussions with the FAA about the waiver. Shortly afterwards, the NDDOT team drafted the waiver and submitted it, ultimately leading to its approval. 

“To accomplish what we accomplished in a short period of time, it required a significant amount of collaboration with the FAA, Northern Plains and NDDOT,” Zimmerman tells Unmanned Systems. 

Additionally, the NDDOT team had to coordinate with the Fargo Airport, as these operations were taking place right next to the airportwhere airplanes were actively and routinely flying, adding another wrinkle to this process and these operations. 

With all that went into obtaining this waiver and conducting these flights, Zimmerman described the first public mission under the IPP as a “very successful event overall.” 

Unlocking the skies

When the UAS IPP was published, Israel-based ParaZero Drone Safety Solutions realized that many of the teams would be looking to operate UAS over people, explains Avi Lozowick, director of policy and strategy at ParaZero.  

This was exactly the type of opportunity the company was looking for,Lozowick says, where they could equip UAS operators with ParaZero’s systems and help them with the data required in their waiver application. 

“By doing so we are effectively unlocking the skies,” Lozowick says. 

With this in mind, ParaZero reached out to its partners at the Northern Plains UAS Test Site who were, and still are, working closely with NDDOT to manage this project.

Months before the waiver for flight over people with a parachute system was submitted, ParaZero was in the process of completing a full testing strategy that included more than 45 aerial deployments of the company’s parachute system. These deployments were used to prove that the company’s safety systems worked properly in a range of different failure scenarios, including a mix of deployments in hover and full forward speed, as well as single motor failures and full power loss.

“The data gathered from the test was important to understand the kinetic energy of [the] drone upon impact as well as the minimum flight altitude that we had to define,” derived from the parachute opening speed plus a safety factor, Lozowick says. 

The ParaZero UAS safety system used for the operations under this waiver includes a fully autonomous triggering system that deploys quickly and reliably without dependence on the operator’s response time. According to ParaZero, once the parachute deploys, the system stops the spinning rotors to avoid entanglement with the parachute cords and reduces the risk of laceration injuries to people on the ground.

“Until today, the handful of existing waivers for flight over people have either been for closed-set operations or for very lightweight and sometimes frangible UAS. This waiver opens the gates for safe flight over people with larger, more advanced UAS that can carry more sophisticated payloads and cameras,” ParaZero CEO Eden Attias said at the time of the September flights.

“This is a major step towards reaching our goal. We hope to learn from this process together with the FAA and are eager to see additional waivers for flight over people in the future.”

CNN pilots at the FargoDome. Photo: NCDOT
CNN pilots at the FargoDome before a drone flight over people. Photo: North Dakota Department of Transportation

Social acceptance 

Getting UAS to the point where they can operate in the public without people second-guessing why they are in the air is one of the ideal outcomes of this program, says Nick Flom, executive director of the Northern Plains UAS Test Site. Flom offers a scenario in which packages are being delivered, and residents in the area won’t wonder or question why entities such as FedEx are using UAS to conduct these operations. 

“We want to see societal acceptance of this technology,” Flom says. 

Social acceptance of this technology will be aided by the work being done under the UAS IPP, and specifically the work being done by the NDDOT team, Lozowick says, as it “will generate significant data and will allow us and the FAA [to] learn about the risks of UAS operations and the different ways to mitigate them.”

Flom says the lessons learned during the IPP can benefit all states, a sentiment shared by NDDOT’s Buchholz.

“If we can make a safe, repeatable process that others can replicate no matter where, that is pretty much the end goal,” Buchholz says.

Above: North Dakota UAS operator Botlink received the first FAA waiver for flights over people with a parachute system. Below: The Botlink-operated DJI drone at the FargoDome. Photos: Botlink

A Botlink-operated DJI drone at the FargoDome. Photo: Botlink