Two AAE graduate students are organizing a special session for the 2019 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Aviation Forum and Exposition in Dallas.

The session on June 20 intends to create a conversation between academy and industry to identify the perceived challenges, potential solutions, and opportunities to realize UAS urban operations through the lens of technology, regulation, and public opinion.

Graduate students Hsun Chao and Apoorv Maheshwari, and Dan DeLaurentis, a professor in AAE, will be the session chairs for “Realizing large-Scale UAS Operations in High-Density Urban Airspace,” one of the “Forum 360” sessions. The panel includes a director from the Federal Aviation Administration, a professor from Michigan, a co-founder of DronSystems, a vice president for Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and an aerospace research engineer from NASA Ames.

One challenges expected to be addressed in the panel include the ability to safely manage large collections of UAVs operated by different operators, while ensuring secure communication channel. The aim of the session is to provide a common platform for industry, rule-making bodies, and academia to further explore issues.

That specific Forum 360 is only one of several panels that will include Purdue representation, as is typical for an AIAA event.

Among others, Tom Shih, the J. William Uhrig and Anastasia Vournas Head and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, will be a panelist on another of the Forum 360 sessions, “Enabling the Engineering Transformation;” DeLaurentis will speak on Urban Air Mobility, and Airline and Passengers; Karen Marais will speak on General Aviation Safety; and Alexey Shashurin will speak on Plasma Flow Control, Diagnostics and Experiential Techniques, and Ablation and Aerothermodynamics. DeLaurentis, Marais and Shashurin are on the organizing committee for the Forum. DeLaurentis is Forum 360 chair, Marias is a Forum technical chair, and Shashurin is plasmadynamics and lasers technical discipline chair. At least four additional Purdue professors are participating in a panel or chairing one: William Crossley, Steven Schneider, Sergey Macheret and Jonathan Poggie.

A full program of speakers is available online. Also, the AIAA has a livestream of the panels.