Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi’s drone program upgrades to institute status

The drone research program at Texas A&M Corpus Christi is celebrating its 10 year anniversary – and with it, an upgrade to being a full blown institute.

Formerly known as the The Lone Star UAS Center of Excellence and Innovation, the newly renamed Autonomy Research Institute will continue its research on unmanned aircraft, as well expand its scope to other autonomous systems.

Mike Sanders, executive director of the Institute, spoke with Texas Standard about the program and its future. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: Tell us a little bit about the history of the institute. How’d it get started, and how has it grown over the past decade?

Mike Sanders: In the FAA Modernization Reform Act of 2012, Congress directed the FAA to set up six unmanned aircraft system (UAS) test sites. And so we were first stood up in 2014, and initially it was for five years. We’ve been reauthorized twice.

So what are the some of the programs the institute has been working on? Can you talk about the opportunities for students interested in these technologies?

Sure, absolutely.

So what we do is we are a research, development and test site for the FAA. And so we do both our own internal research and research in support of agencies such as NASA and the FAA, or commercial entities who want to know more about drones as part of a research center.

We all have students inside our organization. We bring them in, we pair them up with mentors and then give them an opportunity to take what they’ve learned in the classroom and do it in the center.

So typically, someone who’s studying there at the center – thinking for the student-level here – are they learning to fly? Are they learning to design aircraft? What exactly are they doing? What are they specializing in typically?

That’s a great question. And I should say at this point that when we talk about students, it’s not just the STEM – engineering and computer science – but all students from all the colleges, because, it’s really an ecosystem and involves community, business, and environmental as well.

But generally speaking, for those doing computer science, they’re writing code, specifically machine learning aspect of AI. And then the engineering students are really helping fabricate and build either the airframes themselves, or helping us integrate component pieces onto an airframe.

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Texas, and South Texas in particular, has quite a history when it comes to aircraft and air experimentation. And yet I would think that you would have certain advantages, especially being near the coast, no?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We have such a wide range and diversity of the ecosystem and being able to operate over the Gulf, on the littoral and then inland, is really kind of unique. Of all the different test sites that there are, we’re the only one on the Gulf.

What are some practical applications for these technologies that you’re working on?

Well, so the area is really expanding exponentially. And so I think everybody understands that the reason we do this is primarily for safety, so that you can help safeguard human life and replace it with a machine. And so things like pipeline infrastructure inspection, looking at the blades of windmills, agricultural… those are all the things that have already gone on and will continue to go on.

And then there’s really the leap ahead into the future, which is large autonomous aircraft operating – kind of the flying taxis that everybody thinks of. And that application is actually called Advanced Air Mobility and Congress has directed both the FAA and NASA to spearhead that effort so that we have commercially-viable opportunities within the next decade. So that’s really a big one that we do.

I think a lot of people, when they hear “drones,” because we’ve read and heard so much about the application of drones in military – on the battlefield and first strike capability… Are you working with the military at all, or no?

No, not really. Other aspects of the system do do that. I know that we are partnered with Push Combat Development Center and the Innovation Proving Ground to help provide that support.

But generally, what I’m doing is working with both the Department of Interior and National Park Service and NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] on a project, and it’s really about wildlife rescue – stunned turtles, stunned cold turtles – and then actually trying to determine nesting spots using autonomy and change detection with sensors.

Very interesting. Well, tell us about this renaming and rebranding. What’s behind it and what does it mean for the future of the program? 

Well, I think what it is, honestly, is we’ve grown from our initial focus areas as a center over the last decade. As we saw the world change and the environment change around us, we recognized that in order to really help become the intellectual capital of the Coastal Bend in Texas, that we needed to modify.

And so that’s where the autonomy research came in, because autonomy exists in the world today, regardless of the platforms. And while as a UAS test site, we were initially focused on air, we’re looking at all domains. So really, ground, water, and air. And then ultimately we hope to be able to look at suborbital or what is called “Class E airspace.”

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