nmanned aircraft, often known as drones, have tremendous potential: scientific research, search and rescue, cargo delivery, and other applications. This technology can be used to save lives—especially in the 49th state, where general aviation accident rates are more than twice the national average.
Fortunately, the Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft System Integration (ACUASI) is one of the top drone research programs in the country. Located at UAF, the program is developing and testing drones for use in Alaska and across the United States.
“If you can make the technology work here, you can make it work anywhere,” says Catherine F. Cahill, director of ACUASI within the UAF Geophysical Institute. “Alaska is a tough environment in which to fly; there aren’t good communications, the flying distances are long, and the weather is extreme. When it comes to testing drones, we are the final exam.”
“The FAA was looking for geographic and climatic diversity, and Alaska rose to the top on that one, especially partnered with Oregon and Hawaii,” explains Cahill. “We had all of the climate zones they could need. We also have airspace suitable for doing some of this prototype aeronautical research with minimal ground hazards.”
The ACUASI team and its partners, most of whom are Alaskan, then competed for the FAA’s Integration Pilot Program (IPP), which was designed to get small unmanned aircraft systems into commercial use quickly. When the IPP ended, the FAA created BEYOND to address the challenges identified during IPP and asked the Alaska team to continue its work under BEYOND. BEYOND is designed to help overcome the challenges associated with flying beyond pilots’ visual line of sight.
The UAF team also participates in ASSURE, which stands for the Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence, which is led out of Mississippi State University and includes eighteen core schools focusing on aviation safety research, including how to integrate drones into airport operations.
On February 6, 2023, ACUASI received permission from the FAA to act as civil operator for the purpose of testing and evaluating aircraft, which will expand its mission even further.
“That’s a huge change from everything done before,” says Cahill. “Before we had to follow public aircraft operator rules, which meant that we could only do prototype aeronautical research. Once an aircraft is pretty well established, the goal is to put hours on it in order to get to the point that it can be type-certified by the FAA and allowed to fly freely in the national airspace system.”
Putting hours on an established aircraft, though, is not what the FAA considers research, so test sites weren’t able to help companies get from prototype to type-certified. ACUASI is an exception. Cahill says, “Now that we are able to fly as civil operators, we can help them with that.”
Eyal Saiet
“Alaska has one of the highest aviation populations in the country, even though we only have 1 percent of all of the aviators in the country,” says Cahill. “Unfortunately, we also have a huge number of accidents, accounting for about 40 percent of all fatalities. Aviation safety is a key issue, and there are a lot of missions where we lose pilots and biologists and others that could have been done with a drone far more safely.”
She believes remote-piloted or autonomous aircraft could take the place of missions that put pilots and passengers at risk. “If you send out a Twin Otter over the Bering Sea to count ice seals and it goes down, you lose people,” Cahill says. “If you send out a drone and it goes down, all you lose is money. I know which one I’d rather lose.”
ACUASI has successfully proven that drones work in numerous instances and has used them for tasks including 3D mapping of glaciers and the first complete 3D image of the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway in Canada. Drones have been used for wildfire surveillance and carried ground penetrating radar to look at ice roads. They have also been used for numerous wildlife studies, including identifying ringed seals, Steller sea lions, various types of whales, and sea otters in Kachemak Bay. The program has also demonstrated how drones can help with search and rescue and other law enforcement activities.
“We do a lot of aviation research with drones; for example, we have partnered with commercial entities on improving communications systems for long-distance operations in Alaska airspace where they don’t have cellphone coverage and 5G,” says Cahill. “We are also working on determining what infrastructure is needed to support this technology and make it integrate seamlessly with current aviation in Alaska. Because we are flying with general aviation and commercial aviation, we want to make sure that it is safe and seamless.”
One such project includes working with partners on Detect and Avoid technology so that, if the drone operator ever loses communication with an aircraft, the aircraft is still capable of spotting other air traffic and can autonomously maneuver to avoid it.
“This is the Holy Grail of safety as far as the FAA is concerned,” says Cahill. “If we lose our communication link with the aircraft, it will still never hit another aircraft.”
ACUASI’s drone and airspace research has included drones of all sizes, up to aircraft with wingspans bigger than those of Boeing 747s. Its fleet includes a 299-pound SeaHunter and a Sentry with a max takeoff weight of 425 pounds, which are used as proof of principle as they move toward testing larger aircraft.
Alaska Center for UAS Integration
One of the projects ACUASI pioneered was using drones with thermal infrared and visible cameras to look at flare stacks on the North Slope to determine when parts needed to be replaced.
“By using drones, oil companies can order and get the parts onsite before turning off the flare field for repairs. This saves millions of dollars compared to having to shut the field down, do the inspection, wait for the part, do the change, and then turn it on,” says Cahill, adding that this proven technology is now being used by commercial entities on the North Slope.
ACUASI has also worked with Transport Canada to look for North Atlantic right whales in the St. Lawrence seaway to protect the endangered mammal, of which there are less than 400 left in the world. ACUASI and a partner developed a payload that flies on SeaHunter, a twin-engine aircraft that has approximately 12.5 hours endurance, enabling it to fly out of Michel-Pouliot Airport in Gaspé, Quebec, Canada, “mow the lawn” over the St. Lawrence Seaway, and take high-resolution photos with an artificial intelligence (AI) equipped camera system.
“AI then scans the photos looking for whales, and if it finds one, it sends back the longitude/latitude and a picture of the whale,” explains Cahill. “This allows Transport Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada to slow traffic in the St. Lawrence Seaway to keep the whale from being hit.”
“Until you can fly beyond the visual line of sight of your pilot, you’re limited to short-range missions. In Alaska, we want to do long-distance cargo and look at the entire Trans Alaska Pipeline [System] in a single flight. We want to do animal counts and salmon measurements,” says Cahill. Enabling long- range flights opens a new field for other possibilities.
“We’re playing the long game,” she adds. “A lot of companies have gone out of business trying to do this, but we’ve taken the limited amount of funding we’ve had in the past and made every penny squeak. We want to stay in the game to make sure that the rules and regulations that are developed work in the Alaska airspace.”
Cahill notes that ACUASI is working with partners across the country to make unmanned flights a reality, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduates, Silicon Valley start-ups, and other universities and government agencies.
“We’re pushing the boundaries here, and a lot of leading companies have figured that out and have reached out to us,” she says. “We’re partnering with a lot of big names, and that’s exciting. We’re seeing a lot more people coming in, and almost all from word-of-mouth.”
With a laugh, Cahill observes that she’s running a military flight wing as a business at the university, which she says is the best and worst of both worlds. “The key thing is that we’ve got a group of seasoned professionals here who could be anywhere in the world, but they are here because they believe in this mission and they love Alaska,” she says.
“As the technology becomes more integrated, we will need people in our communities who can turn around an unmanned aircraft. Loading and unloading right now is done by pilots,” says Cahill. “We’ll need people to maintain the aircraft as well; these are not toys and need to be maintained just like regular aircraft.”
She adds that each University of Alaska campus is focusing on their own strengths when it comes to working with drones. Southeast is focusing on using drones in environmental sciences, and Anchorage is working on integrating drones into its flight simulator. UAF is creating programs that include mechanical components in its Community & Technical College and just approved an aerospace engineering degree that will also deliver courses remotely to Anchorage.
“There’s really a push to make sure that we have a workforce ready for this,” says Cahill. “Kids in our community can learn to use drones, not just for flying, but for biology studies, oceanography, and art and cinematography, among other uses.”
As she sees it, the UAS field gives Alaska a high-tech industry, encouraging the best and brightest to keep their talents in the state.
“We have our hands in a lot of different realms, but our main focus is on Alaska and trying to establish our drone program as one of the top programs in the country,” Cahill adds. “We’re doing our darndest to make that happen because it’s an extremely important way to diversify our economy.”