FAA test sites
32
unmanned systems
inside
Spring 2014
Texas
With test ranGes that literally span
sea and shore the Texas team intends to
concentrate its unmanned research on applications
involving coastal and ocean areas. From tracking
marine mammals and monitoring the environment
to assessing the condition of drilling platforms, the
Lone Star team intends to develop and demonstrate
new ways to use unmanned aircraft to benefit seaside
communities.
"We have a very strong coastal marine program
that has been there for a long time," said Luis
Cifuentes, vice president for research commercializa-
tion and outreach at Texas A&M; University-Corpus
Christi. "That's our historical strength and we're
simply going to move it into the arena of using
unmanned aircraft systems as a remote sensing
platform for marine science."
Sensors will be the team's focus, Cifuentes
told Inside Unmanned Systems. "Our team
members are going to be doing a lot of work
with geospatial applications—having video
cameras, both visible and (ultra violet),
and (infrared) detections and other mul-
tispectral devices, to be able to look at a
variety of different things."
Unmanned aircraft armed with
suites of such sensors could, for
example, have a real impact by
helping find oil leaks, he said.
Once they spot something out
of the ordinary, gliders and ships
1
the team
Texas A&M; University-
corpus christi leads a
largely academic team
comprising Texas A&M;
Engineering Experiment
Station (TEES) —
which partners with
the corpus christi
campus to support the
lone Star Unmanned
Aircraft Systems center
(lSUASc). Texas A&M;
University-college
Station is also part
of the cadre as is the
center for Autonomous
Vehicles and Sensor
Systems (cANVASS),
the Southwest Research
Institute, the University
of Texas at Arlington
Research Institute, the
camber corporation
and a number of other
research institutions
and private-sector
organizations.
2
INcENTIVES
The state government offers a range of incentives including tax
breaks, expansion and relocation fnancing, an emerging technology
fund that gives grants to both further research and help bring it to
market, and the Texas Enterprise Fund to help entice operations to
locate in the lone Star State.
Texas A&M;
marine applications