The U.S. DHS evaluates new micro UAVs
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will soon be taking new applications for its unmanned aircraft assessment program — a project that gives potential government customers at local, state, and federal levels an impartial evaluation of the strengths and costs of different systems.
According to Inside GNSS, overseen by the DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate, the Robotic Aircraft for Public Safety (RAPS) program is meant to provide a sort of “Consumer Reports” for small unmanned aircraft systems (SUAS) said Kirk Kloeppel, the RAPS program manager and test lead at DHS contractor Modern Technology Solutions, Inc.
“There’re a lot of companies that you are going to see here this week interested in selling a municipality a small, unmanned system,” Kloeppel told the audience at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference (AUVSI 2013) in Washington this week (August 13, 2013). “What DHS is interested in doing is being able to filter through some of that and be an honest broker . . . and let you understand what does work and what does not.”
Being able to choose wisely can help prospective customers among the roughly 30,000 fire departments and 18,000 police departments in the United States. Some of these departments, he said, have aircraft that cost as much as $3 million to buy and $400 to $500 an hour to fly. Small, unmanned systems can be purchased for $30,000 to $100,000 a piece and may cost only $25 to $50 an hour to operate.
The RAPS assessment uses a wide variety of simulated, but realistic, operational scenarios that focus on situations in which human lives are in imminent danger.
RAPS plans to put out another Request for Information this fall, giving more companies a chance to join the program. The new opportunity may, like the first, be limited to unmanned craft weighing 25 pounds or less though it is possible, said Kloeppel that it could be opened to craft weighing twice that.
Homeland Defense is also poised to expand RAPS to a new arena. The University of Alaska is crafting testing criteria for a marine version of the program called RAMPS — Robotic Aircraft for Marine Public Safety, said Greg Walker, the Director of the Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration.
