On August 13, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) participated alongside the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Helicopter Association International (HAI) in a webinar covering the Standardization Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (June 2020, Version 2.0), developed by ANSI's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Standardization Collaborative (UASSC). The session was part of a weekly series of webinars, HAI@Work, hosted every Thursday by HAI on topics of interest to members of the rotorcraft industry. Access the recording: HAI@Work Webinar: Standardization Road Map for UAS.
Participating from ANSI was Jim McCabe, senior director, standards facilitation, and staff lead for the UASSC initiative. Representing FAA was Art Hinaman, manager of the technical programs branch in the office of UAS integration, acting on behalf of FAA executive director of UAS integration Jay Merkle as the government co-chair of the UASSC. Chris Martino, vice president of operations at HAI and industry co-chair of the UASSC, rounded out the panel. Jim Viola, president and CEO of HAI, provided opening remarks. Dan Sweet, director of public relations and communications at HAI, emceed the broadcast.
The webinar explored the benefits of industry standards and their role in supporting regulation and the safe integration of UAS into the U.S. national airspace system (NAS). The ANSI UAS standardization collaborative and roadmap were highlighted as a mechanism to drive coordinated standards development activity. Opportunities for interested stakeholders to influence the development of industry standards was also covered.
Established in 2017, the UASSC is a cross-sector coordinating body working to coordinate and accelerate the development of standards and conformance programs that will facilitate the safe integration of UAS into the NAS. The group is particularly concerned with civil, commercial, and public safety UAS operations. The latest version of the UASSC roadmap, published at the end of June 2020 (see related news item), was developed with input from hundreds of subject matter experts across the public and private sectors.
For more information about the UASSC, visit www.ansi.org/uassc.