Intel has announced that it has performed the first public demonstration of Open Drone ID, an open standard that offers a solution for the remote identification and tracking of unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
The new standard is a result of Intel’s work with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other industry participants to foster innovation and to shape the global standards and practices for UAS, with safety being the first priority. Intel’s assistance builds on the company’s foundational work with the Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) trials conducted by NASA and the FAA to develop and test drone guidelines for collaborative communications and navigation among unmanned aerial systems in the sky.
Open Drone ID is designed as an open standard that offers a solution. It is a beacon-based (wireless drone identification) solution that enables drones to be identified when within range of a receiver, like a smartphone. The current draft specification is based on Bluetooth 4.2 broadcast packets and Bluetooth 5 (long-range) advertising extensions. With this technology, each aircraft can broadcast its unique ID, location, direction, altitude, speed, make/model, base location and other related data.
The Open Drone ID project is managed through a workgroup within ASTM, an international standards body. Intel is leading the ASTM F38 Remote ID Standard and Tracking Workgroup. It is important that Open Drone ID is a global standard, like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, to provide broad scalability to many end users and use cases.
More information can be found at the Open Drone ID website.