First operational drone traffic management system aims to prevent midair collisions

The drone industry has landed after a long flight to the implementation of drone traffic management.

With a primary goal of avoiding drone-on-drone collisions, the Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership (MAAP) recently helped operationalize the first uncrewed aircraft traffic management system, also known as drone traffic management, in the U.S. Also supported by NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), an industry-led effort that took place in North Texas in March built upon years of testing traffic management systems that share ongoing flight data to deconflict drone flights.

“This is a culmination of 10 years of work,” said John Coggin, MAAP’s associate director. “The product of this work is that the industry now has a path forward for data sharing among uncrewed aircraft systems operators, which helps mitigate collision risk between drones. Advanced and overlapping drone operations require that companies share data to ensure safety. The industry-governed framework established here helps meet these safety goals and provides a template to scale drone traffic management services in the U.S. and worldwide.”

The management systems are now available for any entity—industry or government—to enhance the safety of its drone use.

Creating a successful system to manage drone traffic hinges on appropriately leveraging the technology operators use to communicate with each other about uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) operations. The technology also retrieves data about nearby flights, providing the information necessary to deconflict drone flights quickly and safely.

The multi-agency effort to create such a system began in 2015, when NASA conducted research to support the growing demand for commercial drone use. This included MAAP helping to develop and test a drone traffic management system in real-world scenarios.

In 2018, the FAA Reauthorization Act gave the FAA oversight of implementation. MAAP continued to help with the testing before assuming the role of facilitating conversations between industry partners, NASA, and the FAA.

In the new role, MAAP helped leverage industry insights to expedite the creation of governance structure and data sharing agreement that would fit the needs of all parties. This included testing based on real-life scenarios that required drone operations to coordinate with each other via different software platforms.

This led to the most recent milestone in Texas—the FAA authorization of drone flights to share the airspace despite significant operator demand and overlapping drone flight paths.

“It was a historic first for U.S. aviation,” said FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau. “Now we want to move from one-off approvals or exemptions to the predictability of operating by rule for beyond visual line of sight, or BVLOS. And when finalized, this rule will provide the UAS industry with the regulatory framework it needs.”

The resulting governance agreement guides participation, dispute resolution, and the onboarding of new service providers and operators. The governance structure splits the governance into two committees: operational and technical. The operational committee oversees administration and onboarding while the technical committee handles development and incorporation of new features and services for the drone traffic management platforms.

In summer 2024, drone operators from Wing, Zipline, and DroneUp—all companies that specialize in drone delivery—and service supplier ANRA Technologies obtained the first FAA letters of agreement to deploy the newly developed drone management services. MAAP then drafted a report documenting the steps taken over the years, marking the initial operationalization.

As this work continues to evolve and improve within this framework, any company or government entity operating in the U.S. that undergoes the onboarding process can use this framework. Interested parties can visit the “get started” page on GitHub for more information.

“Unlike previous efforts I’ve been involved in, it’s not a ‘here is your final report’ and the project is done,” Robert Briggs, MAAP’s chief engineer said. “It’s an ongoing process which is really exciting. It’s not like previous testing for this effort, where we’ve turned the services off. Here, the traffic management systems are operational and can continue to grow and be used as a model for future implementation around the world.”