Flight testing avionics of an optionally piloted aircraft for UAS integration in the civil airspace

Flight-testing of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) avionic technologies can be quite difficult and expensive due to the current flight safety restrictions. Optionally Piloted Aircrafts (OPAs) overcome part of these issues thanks to the presence of an on-board safety pilot (SP). This paper describes the Italian Aerospace Research Centre's (CIRA) on-board, communication and on-ground systems used to convert a commercial manned fixed wing Aircraft (A/C) into an OPA that can be operated like a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS). This facility allowed a low cost flight campaign to analyse the feasibility of UAS Integration in the Civil Airspace and evaluate the workload of Traffic Controller (TC) and Remote Flight Operator (RFO). The paper also illustrates the process and tests requested by the National Aviation Authority to grant the Permit to Fly (PtF). Finally, some selected results of the flight test campaign are included to demonstrate the performance and capabilities of the proposed OPA avionic architecture to perform UAS-like real operating missions and so safely allow low cost flight trials for RPAS integration in the civil airspace.