UAS News Podcast — 2013-08-28
Transcript
Welcome to the next installment of the UAS News Podcast Series where we interview newsmakers and discuss the news and applications relevant to the global unmanned technologies community. This week's episode, episode 60 is Unmanned Aircraft Systems Airspace Operations Challenge which we will delve right into. I think this is a great, great topic and we've got some good guests. But before we get bringing the guests on, as per usual, we like to say hello and offer a warm welcome to our co-host who's not tardy today, Mr.
Gene Robinson. Hello, Patrick. I am getting better, aren't I?
Yeah, did you get rid of that Chinese alarm clock? As a matter of fact, I did, but I had to set it three times before I got it right, but you know how that goes. But I'm here and I'm happy. I think that this is going to be a good show.
I'm looking forward to talking about some of this stuff that you guys are doing. Oh, yeah, I think it's a great opportunity and I'm definitely looking forward to hearing more about it. I think it's something if I have more time, I definitely want to jump in on. I think it's, again, a real opportunity.
But before we get onto that, onto today's subject, Gene, as usual, we'd like to talk a little bit about the news. And we did a little bit before the show went live, but let's talk about some of the news stories, amigo. Yeah, I think probably the biggest one at the forefront of everyone's mind is the Hexacopter that went in at the Bull Run in Virginia. And as I kind of stated earlier, we appreciate Miley Cyrus taking the heat off of some of this stuff for us, but I think that one is going to come back and we're going to see a lot of repercussions from this.
I think that there's going to be some movement that we're not going to want to like to see. And the unfortunate thing about it is that we discussed this. You know, the community-based standards that were put together by our CAPA address this sort of thing. And I think we said 150 yards or 100 yards.
Yes, away from open air type crowds like that, which I think is... Yeah. ...is pretty sage advice, keep yourself out of trouble. And I mean, you know, I have to be honest, even when I started out, I did some stuff that was marginal, but without doing it where there was no one else around. But, you know, I think people, that's another thing with this technology, is a lot of people, they say, oh, you know, what could go wrong?
You know, it really is a 4D type of environment that you're flying in, and lots can go wrong. You know, gusts of wind, downdraft, you know, equipment failure. That's another thing I've really noticed too, and this is probably since you probably noticed this too, there's a real flight to economy instead of quality in parts. Have you noticed that too, Gene?
Indeed, and unfortunately there are overseas markets that are being flooded that we have access to, obviously. And, you know, everybody is trying to get the best bang for the buck. And that bang, sometimes there's not the bang that you want. That fuse may be a little short and you still got the firecracker in your fingers.
Exactly. And I mean, if you're going to... I mean, I think these guys had to... didn't they have one of those red cameras on there?
So I don't know, but I do think that was bad. I do... I know there's talk of an investigation from some of the federal groups. We'll just call it that.
Two of the groups are going to open an investigation on that. I don't know what's going to happen. I do think they'll probably get cited, but... or at least get some sort of cease and desist letter.
That's another thing delving into. There are a few... or there's one court case coming up on somebody who I know a lot of people thought had a flagrant disregard for the safety of the NAS. We'll have to see how that pans out.
There's a few things going on there. But I do... the Miley Cyrus thing, too, at the VMAs are only once a year. Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, yeah, that was... I mean, you got to hand it to her. She's really kind of jumped out there front and center. You know what they say in Hollywood, as long as they're talking about it, it doesn't matter whether it's good or bad.
So she's getting her wish. Yeah, I don't know if that worked too well for this industry. We've been getting only the bad. I mean, people are trying to chime in with the good, so we'll have to see.
But it's hard to have a lot of good when you don't have a legal industry. But I think that kind of segues us right into segment one and our guests. First, let me introduce Dr. Larry Cooper, and he's from NASA.
And Larry, as we bring you on here, could you please introduce yourself to the audience with a little bit of a little bio, what you do, how you got involved with Unmanned Aircraft Systems, please? Okay. Glad to, Patrick. Hi, I'm Patrick.
I'm the program executive for the NASA Centennial Challenge Program. And that's one of nine programs that comprises our space technology mission directorate here at NASA headquarters. And we develop technology to support major advancements in the NASA mission capabilities. I've been in this program for a bit over two years.
I started my career with NASA working on aeronautics and space propulsion systems at NASA Glenn in Cleveland, Ohio. And I'm a graduate of the aerospace engineering program out of the University of Illinois. Excellent. And just a sideline question.
Did you happen to do any work with the, while you were in Ohio, with the Aerostat program that they had? No, I didn't. Okay. So just, yeah, I do some work with the Battle Lab.
We have an Aerostat, and it was actually working at Glenn over there and doing some work in Ohio. And I'm just curious if that was something you were involved in too, sideline. But that's pretty interesting. Michael, could you please do the same, sir?
I can. Thanks, Patrick. I'm Michael Hetley. I'm the program executive for the aeronautics research mission directorate, prizes and challenges here at headquarters NASA.
ARMD is one of the four core lines of business here in NASA, one of the mission directorates. And I work with the integrated systems research program office within ARMD. And we're concentrating on proven technologies that perform testing and validation in operational and relevant environments to help us transition and advance those technologies into the aerospace sector. I've been here at NASA about four years.
My current role is a program executive. I happened earlier in the spring this year. Previously, I had been the executive officer here in aeronautics. And my background in education is from the California State University system out west.
Oh, really? I'm out here in California. Did you miss California?
I did miss the weather. I do have to tell you August here on the East Coast is a little hard to take after you've been out west. It only rains on the weekends when you plan things, right?
Absolutely. I noticed that. I can't plan anything on the weekends because it's going to rain. But yeah, I do love the weather out here.
You know what you're going to get all the time. Well, that was very interesting. That was very interesting. And you know, Larry, you kind of went into the Centennial Challenge concept a little bit.
And I think that's a great concept. But how does that kind of fit into this contest?
And what was the, let's say, the impetus behind this contest? Well, let me start by kind of framing for your audience what the Centennial Challenge's program is all about. And it's a prize competition program. It's unique in the agency.
We use prizes as a way to incentivize the development of technology as compared to using grants and contracts, which is kind of our traditional way of developing technologies. So it's a program that started back in 2005, and it builds on a long, long history of using prize competitions to foster innovation, dating all the way back to the Longitude Prize, which the British government offered back in the 1700s for coming up with a way to accurately determine the position of their ships at sea
and leading all the way up to things like the competition that Lindbergh won for crossing the first solo flight across the Atlantic, and then more recently things like prizes that the XPRIZE Foundation has run, such as the Ansari XPRIZE, which was the commercialization of sending people into space.
So it builds on a long history of prize competitions, and it really has value to NASA in that it brings out nontraditional players to participate. It's not just the usual aerospace industry contractors and grantees. It allows NASA to look at several approaches to solving a single problem simultaneously, and probably best of all is that we actually don't pay out any money until we actually have somebody who's solved our problem for us. So those are the things that work on the NASA side for why we like to do these things.
Competitors like to do them because as a nontraditional player, you're basically judged on what you've accomplished in terms of technology demonstration, not being picked on what you propose, if you will, and your proposal writing skills. And you also get to retain the intellectual property that you develop. You as a competitor own your intellectual property, and you have the rights to use that intellectual property to build a career in business, if you'd like. So those are the things that draws competitors into this whole thing.
And that'd be... Oops, sorry, go ahead. The other thing that competitors get out of this is they get a great deal of visibility from competing in one of our competitions, visibility that they would probably never be able to afford otherwise. If you're a small garage operation, something like that, you can imagine the opportunity here that's presented by being featured on the NASA competitions and the promotions that go along with that.
Absolutely. And I think that that is the big value of that. When I first got into this contest, I started telling people, really, this is... I would say whoever comes in at the top three on this is you've got a, let's say, a legacy talking point.
We were involved in this, and then our solution came in second or third even. You're still... You're a player. And it's funny we talk about the garage tinkerers, because I did get...
I had asked Tad McGeer for a copy of that picture of the aeroson on the bench in his garage. Because I think of Tad McGeer as the quintessential garage tinkerer. You know, even though he's developed the aeroson in the Skaneagle, he still did it in the garage. And then so, Michael, would you like to add in on the Centennial Challenge concept?
Well, I think I'd like to talk, Patrick, a little bit about why NASA is doing this in the first place. And I would point out that NASA's had a history of supporting research, development, and flight tests for many types of UASs that are being used entirely for civilian purposes. And so when we look at the civil future, we look at unmanned aircraft systems as being integrated into that. UAS promised to dramatically change the face of commercial aviation, which enable whole new markets and potentially square-economic job creation.
So for us, when we look at industry forecasts, UAS operations will increase exponentially once they're fully integrated within the national airspace system. So today in the United States, there are about 50 companies, universities, and government organizations developing more than 150 different unmanned aircraft designs. So when we look at the fundamental goals of integrating the UAS into the NAS, it is a natural progression for us to pick up a Centennial Challenge because it's a hard problem to solve.
And we want to reduce the technical barriers related to the safety and operational challenges that are associated with doing that and enabling routine UAS civil access to the NAS. Right. And so the premise of this contest, the UAS AOC, is primarily for sense and avoid, correct?
That is correct. We want to do sense and avoid. The purpose of the project in the first place is to support NAS in investigating how unpiloted or remotely piloted aircraft can safely operate in the same airspace as other piloted aircraft, robotic aircraft, and their operators. So here when we talk about sense and avoid, we're talking about creating a realistic air traffic environment where academic, public, private, and commercial UAS operators can demonstrate that they've successfully developed and integrated the technologies needed to operate safely in the NAS.
And so it is sense and avoid is a key enabler. Okay. And, you know, let me give Gene a chance to jump in here, Gene. Are there any comments that you'd like to make as you've been listening to this?
Yeah, I kind of figured that a lot of the stuff that you guys collect would help build standards as well. I know one of the things that we've tried to push for a long time is, you know, getting those standards that could be used in a commercial basis. And you'll be getting that sort of information too, is that correct?
That's correct. And so when we start to talk about goals of the competition and some of the things that NASA would like in the fundamental R&D arena, the data set is in fact something that we want and some of our other governmental stakeholder organizations would want to see as well. And it is geared, as you mentioned, towards the standards. And the follow-up on that would be, is there, have you guys developed like some sort of baseline matrix for the data that you're trying to collect?
Is there like some sort of log or has something like that been developed or is that in the works? It is. In fact, part of the competition when we do this, we're going to be doing, by the way, two phases of competition, a level one and a level two. And the level one is going to be focusing on the competitor's ability to fly a four-dimensional trajectory or a 4DT to provide an expectation of where the vehicles are supposed to be in flight.
And so all of the aspects of the flight and the competition are going to be tracked on various forms of data collection and management, including the devices that we're actually going to have on the vehicles to sense and avoid during the competition. That's good. The data part of it is definitely important. And one other side question that I had on this, is this in conjunction or is it standalone from the UAS into the NAS project that NAS is doing?
Yeah, Patrick, that's a good question. In fact, I worked for the ISRP, the program office, and the UAS and the NAS project is one of our pursuits within the ISRP. So it is actually a part of it. We actually put a link on the NASA web page for ARMD that is called the Unmanned Aerial Systems Airspace Operations Challenge.
So it's something you can read or the listeners can read for right off the bat. But again, there is the need to routinely access the NAS. And part of the limitation now is, as we were talking earlier, the lack of sense and avoid concepts and technologies that are interoperable right now in the NAS. So from that perspective, it is directly related to the UAS and the NAS project.
Interesting. Okay, well, so that's good to know because we had Chuck Johnson on the show not too long ago, and we had talked to him about some of the goals of that project. And we are big supporters of that. And that's another reason I wanted to have you guys on too, is supporting what's going on here.
I read over some of the documentation. Of course, we try and bring that down a level so people that haven't read about it can understand that. But you know, anything we can do here at SUS News to help, we want to be able to help you guys with this goal because we believe, most of what you asked about how this is the future of aviation and the promise that it has in the commercial sector, basically to help all kinds of different businesses perform, believe it or not. So I will put that out there that we're always here to help on that.
So I understand some of the goals. We talked about, or you mentioned that there were several phases. And maybe we can kind of parse out the phases and talk about, because it is also split over time, correct?
There's like phase one is one year and then phase two is the next year? Well, phase two will follow phase one when we have some winners at phase one. We may or may not get a winner the first time out of the box. It's not at all untypical for our challenge to take a couple of offerings before we have winners.
So after that... Yeah, like the X Prize. Yeah, okay. It's similar.
There have been several attempts at those. Well, yeah, I mean, we are talking about breaking new ground. So the first phase is before we move on as predicated on someone wins phase one. And maybe you could talk about the goals, let's say, for phase one for the winner, for people out there listening, taking notes on how they're going to bring down phase one.
Well, Patrick, this is Michael. I'll be happy to talk a little bit about that. So when we envisioned the challenge and we started to look at what we wanted, we originally thought it would be about a year apart. So our first phase that we're planning for is in May 2014.
And we already have a set of dates nominally that we picked. We've worked with an allied organization. And we're looking at the challenge event first being conducted at what's known as HMSL Airfield at the Camp Atterbury Range near Edinburgh, Indiana. And just for geographical reference, it's about 40 miles south of Indianapolis.
And pretty close to the end of the year, we're going to be looking at the challenge event. And pretty close to the Indianapolis Airport if you were to drive to south. So that's our event location right now. And our allied organization is shooting for the 5 to 9 May 2014 date.
And we hope that that will be what we go with. So that said, the challenge is going to be in two parts. The phase one challenge, which is known to us as P1C, will be held at that location and will focus on a competitor's ability to operate a UAS that can fly within a planned route corridor, deploy automatic dependent surveillance broadcast or ADS-B, and also receive, detect, and avoid cooperative air traffic information, and then operate safely in a variety of contingency situations that we set up for the challenge.
So a winner in that competition for the half million dollars first would successfully demonstrate those elements and be able to do it at a better level than the other competitors. And what are we talking about, Rosman, for phase one?
I just got to see if I'm going to put the notebook away. What are we talking about?
We're talking about half a million dollars as a prize purse. And we're really talking about phase one. Phase one, that's right. All right.
I got the notebooks back on the desk. Half a million. Okay. Half a million.
Okay. And we said as far as those solutions that you can partner with kind of whoever you want, is there the rules?
What are the rules on that? Can I enlist whoever I want and use whatever I think?
Yeah, you can. The way these things are set up is that we encourage basically anybody that wants to to compete in the competition. There are people from a couple of countries or organizations from a couple of countries that were prohibited from law from having a relationship with. And those countries are listed on what's called a designated country list.
And they are the usual suspects that you might think of like North Korea and places like that. But up to those groups, we encourage foreign competitors to enter the competition. Now, that being said, by law, we're not allowed to award a prize funds to anyone other than a U.S. citizen, a permanent resident of the United States, or a company which is organized and maintaining a primary place of business in the United States.
And so one might ask, well, why would these other organizations, other countries, people from other countries compete in our challenges? And the answer is for them, it's about publicity, recognition, notoriety, if you will, and what all that goes along with it. If they can come and say that they're the best, turned out to be the best in the world, what they're going to walk away with is probably much more valuable than a share of the half million dollar prize. I would concur with that.
And I have encouraged, like I said, first get wind of this. I was thinking companies, if I was one of these sequestration companies, and I'm looking to make a name for myself and say, how can I make a name for myself?
Even like you said, if you were a foreign based company, and you were able to pull this one out of the hat, and you developed a product, you'd be kind of in the proverbial catbird seat. So I do think there's value. Yeah, and we've had teams from other countries participate in some of our other challenges. We ran a robotics challenge just this last June, and we had a team of university students from Canada, and then another team from Estonia came in, and both did quite well in the competition.
Excellent. Well, yeah, and I think that global cooperation thing is great. And I think that the goal is great. So I'm glad to hear it's open to all comers with those certain stipulations, and some people can't play nice in the sandbox.
So let's talk about phase two. Let's talk about what happens in phase two, because I still have the notebook here. Sure. I'm blinding out my career move here.
Go ahead. Anybody want to try the phase two side of the challenge?
Okay, well, one of the things that I would like to ask from either one of you guys, is have you gotten any indication? I'm going to get down kind of into the nuts and bolts of who might show up to play and what they might bring. But I'm very curious, have you gotten any responses as to the size of the unmanned aircraft that are intended to be entered?
Have you had any indications that somebody is going to enter a Global Hawk as the platform, or are they going to be something like a slow stick, or have you gotten any indications at all? Okay, well, with that said, I would like to say that even though there is a half a million dollar prize out there, if you've studied any of the X challenges that have been out in the past, the N-series challenge, those sorts of things, it's not a small effort to come up with the phase one goals, if you will. I mean, it's pretty extensive.
You need to do quite a bit of R&D if you haven't done that already. And it has to be something that you can take out and not be theoretical. It's got to be taken out in the field and flown, and you've got to be able to demonstrate those goals that are needed for the phase one. So you'll spend a lot of money getting to where you can at least try to demonstrate those capabilities.
Absolutely. Hold on. I think we might have... have we got our guests back?
Yes, you do. I don't know what happened there, but... All right. A hacker from a designated country, probably.
Either that or NSA just finally hit the tap or something. Who knows?
But we're back now. Now, I had a good question, as I was saying, I think right before we got cut off, I got the notebook going, and I'm outlining the business plan. So I need to know what the criteria is for phase two. Sure.
To be the winner. We'll talk a little bit about the level two. So, you know, building on what we talked about, the elements were for the phase one, the level two part of the competition would extend the requirements in all those areas and then add the requirements to maintain safe separation from air traffic that's not equipped with ADS-B, and then a requirement that the vehicle be able to communicate verbally with air traffic control systems under existing loss link conditions and procedures. So that's what the complexity level of phase two adds.
And building upon success, hopefully in phase one, the price first to demonstrate phase two is a million dollars. So the total for one and two is 1.5 million. All right. I think I could do something with that.
But we are talking about a pretty complex problem that so they need to let's see, let's see, and avoid non-cooperative aircraft. Correct?
That is correct. So yeah, that's going to be a tough one. But, you know, there is a lot of money at stake and even more prestige if someone is able to, let's say, crack the code on phase two. Now, we already talked about some of the questions.
We had kind of jumped ahead. And Gene had some, or a good question to ask about some of the aircraft you might encounter. So Gene, would you like to ask that question again, please?
Yeah, we'll try that one more time, guys. Have you gotten any indication of what size of aircraft are going to be entered in the competition?
Do you know of, you know, is it going to be a Global Hawk type of deal or is it going to be the smaller, you know, four-pound guys? Is it going to run the range?
Have you gotten any feel for that at all? So we've actually put out a notice for public comment. The rules are out on the Allied Organization website right now and the comment period closes, I believe, at the end of this week. And so we've asked for some more detail.
Initially, last fall when we put out the RFI talking about the competition, we got about 35 different inquiries with the average size of the vehicle looking to be 55 pounds or greater, up to the size of about a Cessna 150 roughly. So that seems to be the range of interest from our first inquiry, but we don't know yet until the comment period is closed if it will be bigger or smaller. And where did the rules come from?
I guess how did the rules come about? And I know you just said you had the request for more information, but how did those rules come about?
We've been working on the rules for a better part of a year internally within NASA and our technical experts in the areas. And then we solicited and selected an organization to work with us to actually manage the competition and secure the airspace for us and to do all that. And that's a group out of Dayton, Ohio called Development Projects Incorporated. And so once we got them on board in the May timeframe this year, we've been working pretty much full speed with them to come up with this set of draft rules.
We started with a sort of a concept of operation and some preliminary rules, and then we worked with them to come up with a set of rules that we put out for the first round of draft public comments. And so you put it out for comments, and you're already getting comments and they seem like you guys were on target, or can you discuss that at all?
Well, we haven't seen the closure yet from the latest one that we've put out. The previous RFI, the one that we put out back in the fall, that did seem to be on target. We had a lot of very constructive input. We had folks even ask us more questions back than give us comment coming in.
But we very much thought it was all on target, and we'll just have to see next week when this period closes what the new input is. Okay. So you're waiting for all of that to come in still. We did talk about that.
So all the entrants themselves are responsible for all the required equipment. You've got to basically show up with all your stuff. What do you get from the contest?
Is there no fee or is there a fee to enter into this? Do you have to bring certain things with you, or do you just kind of show up with what you want to kind of hit the, or what you think you're going to need to win the contest?
Right. Patrick, that's a great question. Right now, the draft of the rules and then the agreements for the teams that are out there show that there is a registration fee from the allied organization to compete. I couldn't tell you right now what the end fee is going to be, but they are paying attention to affordability and participation.
And so the contestants, folks who would want to come and compete, basically show up with their vehicle ready to go. It's the responsibility of the contestants to do that. The only exception is what we're calling the tracker module, which is what I mentioned earlier in our discussion, where this is the device that we want to put on it to track the movements of the vehicle. Other than that, the competitors are responsible for providing all their equipment.
It's primarily a function for the tracker module to provide independent real-time trajectory of the competitor, the aircraft, its position, and then to help the judges and safety personnel in monitoring. The tracker module, from our standpoint, is also going to serve as an official data log for the service of the competitors, allowing them to record the sensor data and events of the flight for a post-mission scoring and analysis. So that's a relatively small item of hardware, and the rest is up to the competitors.
And then what is the, let's say, sensor integration or the tracker integration like? Is it something, you know, common voltage, common plug, or you just kind of get the loose pigtails and you integrate it in your own system, or are you calling out what it needs?
It's actually in the sample for the team agreement. It actually has a picture in there of the device. It talks about what the requirements are for power, what the requirements are for transmission, and it gives the contestants an idea of what they're going to have to integrate to put it on the vehicle. So that's our plan.
It's a commercial off-the-shelf technology that our program manager thought was very useful. And it's light enough and small enough it shouldn't interfere at all with the vehicle's operation. Excellent. Excellent.
And that's good to know. That really, so everyone's going to get that. That's kind of the, let's say, the level playing field for everybody. You get the tracker.
We get the data. We understand what you did. You did it. So I kind of like that.
Yeah. And that's one of the things that we make, we try to make sure of when we run a challenge is that we do have some objective standards for determining whether or not somebody is qualified to win a prize and just rank order people on the basis of objectively measured criteria. Yeah. Well, and you guys kind of have that reputation of running a square game, which is another thing that I personally like about NASA.
And it sounds like that was well thought out there. I mean, no conjecture. We're downloading it right here. We know what we've got.
We know what you did and how it performed and whatever else. I know it's still a little early on this, but a lot of interest, some interest. What's been the feedback from the community?
So far it's been pretty good interest. It's received an awful lot of recognition and we've heard about it from several of the committees that NASA turns to for oversight for aviation. The draft as it went out last fall was very well received. We've been asked about it several times.
We've been up on Capitol Hill here speaking with staff of legislators who were all very excited about it as well. In our partner, allied government organizations here are also interested and very supportive. So quite a bit of interest in the fact that NASA is using the Centennial Challenges vehicle here to put it out as a prize helps us solve a really hard technical problem. And by the way, thank you for the compliment on running a square game.
We do want to continue that and that is a strong reputation. So that matters to all of us who have an equity in the aerospace sector here. And it does continue a tradition. I'm also the Silicon Valley chapter president of AEVSI and we used to meet at the flight ops at NASA Ames.
And in that building, in the ready room, we would meet there. And all of the pictures on the wall of, I'm sure you guys have been around for a while. I don't know if you've been around this long, but late 70s, early 80s and the glossy color pictures of all of the different, let's say, one off aircraft and testing and all the rest of that. God, I mean, exciting times.
And I'm really glad to see that NASA again is jumping in here on the future of aviation technology and helping to move the ball forward because all of that stuff, a lot of those aircraft are still in hangars out at Ames. And if you get to go out to the hangar, it's pretty exciting. You guys been around that long at NASA?
Yeah, absolutely. So, Patrick, it's really great to hear the acknowledgement of all the efforts that we've undertaken over the years. And we do see this as the future. We do see this as a R&D pursuit.
It is something that needs to be done. And getting a hold of the data and determining really a baseline of where are we if we have a competition for the civil UAS. What is the realm of possible?
What will people demonstrate when we bring them all to a competition? And so that is a great deal in the spirit of moving things forward and pushing the envelopes to get things integrated and get the data and then use it for advancement and technology readiness. Well, and the objectivity, I think, is really something that is really needed here. And it's just, you know, one of the bigger companies comes up with a solution to this problem.
And, you know, I'm kind of concerned about the, you know, I call it the PCAST handle-bearing. You know, we have the congressional mandates for the FAA. And, you know, the date comes rolling around and they go, gee, we don't really have anything. Okay, well, you know, get on the boat.
What's the closest we've got? And they go around and, you know, somebody in Apple will just call them and say, hey, here's what we got. Okay, we need it. We slap it in there.
Is that the best solution? Possibly, possibly not. And that's another thing that I really like about the contest that you guys are running. I mean, of course, there's a financial gain at the end of this deal, but it's all commoners.
You know, anybody comes in here, it's not just one guy. And we can objectively make that determination of how to best solve the problem. Or maybe it's a partnership between, you know, first and third or whatever to make that technology happen. And that I find very exciting.
So, you know, we're getting down towards the end. And like I told you before, we get on the air every week. We're going to make 45 minutes and it just whizzes right by because we have great guests like you guys. How about the website where folks can learn more about this contest?
Actually, I don't even know if I want to give that out because I think I want to ring that prize, but no, just teasing God. What's the website on that?
www.uasaoc.org And you can go there and see all the information and you've got links to information that contestants would need to read and see. But when do you think it'll be final, final?
We're hoping to make this a fairly quick turnaround and finalize it in September and open registration. You know, time's a waste in here for, you know, our time scale of getting this thing done, you know, in competition conducted in May. So we want to, we're not going to, we're going to move ahead as quickly as possible. All right.
Well, you know, and as I had offered up before, you know, SUAS News will do whatever we can if you guys need to put out press releases or information or whatever. I definitely welcome any information you want to send along that we can disseminate to the community and also when it's going on or whatever, we are totally open to helping out in any way we can. And I'll just put that out there. And Gene, I wanted to give you a chance, you know, as always, I kind of ran past all that.
Any comments or questions that you'd like to follow up with, sir? Well, I'm kind of agreeing with the guys that time's a waste in right now. We need to get on this thing. So I'm totally behind this one and I think that the ADSB usage and that sort of thing is right on target.
I think there's going to be some really cool stuff come out of this. Yeah, well, ADSB has a lot of promise. That was another thing. You know, I don't want to get too obscure out there, but the ADSB units, are you guys outlining units?
I know there's a couple of commercially available. Are there any stipulations on that that you have to use, like say one of the three products or different frequencies?
Is there any stipulations on that? Yeah, Patrick, the one that's pictured in the draft rules there is a COTS, Commercial Off-the-Shelf System Technology, and that is a specific vendor and type. There are other options. That's up to our project manager that's implementing the challenge for us here at NASA.
And I think part of what we're looking for in the comment period is if that's too restrictive or if competitors or folks who have an interest don't like it, we'd like to hear more about that. But I think for the purposes of the challenge, when we put the devices on the vehicles, it's going to be one uniformed product for everybody. I don't know that we would want to have a lot of variation just for purposes of being fair. Okay, one last question since RFI is still out there.
Is there a website where people could go and look and comment that you'd like to mention? Yeah, that's the www.uasaoc.org. The rules are there. The other governing documents are there.
People can go and download the documents and submit their comments directly to our partner organization, Development Project Inc. Excellent, excellent. So there's still time to do that. I recommend everybody listening get out there.
Look at those. Make your comments. I like that idea that the public can comment on this. So great idea.
I wish you guys best of luck on that one again. We hope to hear from you in the future. Larry, Michael, thank you so much for being on or being our guest this week. It was a pleasure.
It was a pleasure, Patrick. Thanks for having us. No problem. Gene, we'll listen to you next week, buddy.
Have a good week. Okay. All right. Goodbye, y'all.