CDA and MIT Lincoln Laboratory Announce Research Partnership

The Laboratory has partnered with the Commercial Drone Alliance to develop tools that will aid safety assessments of unmanned aircraft operations.
February 21, 2024
Commercial Drone Alliance

The Commercial Drone Alliance (CDA), an independent 501c6 non-profit organization led by key members of the commercial drone industry, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory (MIT LL), a Department of Defense federally funded research and development center, today announced a collaboration to open doors for safe and scalable commercial drone operations.

The joint research will focus on further developing a nationwide database of aircraft traffic density, a free, open-source tool created by MIT LL. Insight gathered through the collaborative research will enable risk-based analysis of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations and enable integration into the U.S. National Airspace. This new joint research builds upon research investments previously made by NASA and the FAA.

Learn more about the Laboratory's air traffic control research.

Learn more about open-source aircraft traffic tools on GitHub: https://github.com/mit-ll/traffic-density-database and https://airspace-encounter-models.github.io.