The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has published its Standardization Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Version 1.0).
The roadmap was developed by the institute’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Standardization Collaborative (UASSC), a group established to coordinate and accelerate the development of standards and conformity assessment programs to facilitate the safe integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into national airspace.
Over 300 individuals from approximately 175 public- and private-sector organizations actively supported the document’s development, including representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), additional U.S. federal government agencies, standards developing organizations (SDOs), industry and academia.
According to ANSI, the roadmap represents the culmination of the UASSC’s work over the last 15 months to identify existing standards and standards in development, assess gaps, and make recommendations for priority areas where there is a perceived need for additional standardization, including pre-standardization research and development.
Launched in September 2017, the UASSC’s purpose is to foster coordination and collaboration on standardization among industry, government, SDOs and others. To that end, the roadmap clarifies a current and desired future UAS standardization landscape to help enable stakeholders to better focus standards participation resources, ANSI says. Though the UASSC itself is not developing standards, it hopes that the roadmap recommendations will see wide adoption by the standards community. Ultimately, the aim is to support the growth of the drone market.
“As a neutral facilitator, ANSI has a successful track record of bringing together stakeholders to define standardization needs for emerging technologies and national and global priorities in areas as diverse as homeland security, electric vehicles, energy efficiency in the built environment, and additive manufacturing,” says S. Joe Bhatia, president and CEO of ANSI. “As ANSI’s 100th anniversary year comes to a close, it is fitting that we add to our list of accomplishments this important contribution to the discussion around standards for UAS.”
ANSI’s facilitation of the UASSC is supported in part by contributions from the FAA, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate, the ASTM International/National Fire Protection Association Joint Working Group, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), and others.
