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The full integration of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) in non-segregated airspace is one of the major objectives for the worldwide aviation organizations and authorities. However, there are several technological and regulatory issues due to the increase of the air traffic in the next years and to the need of keeping high safety levels. In this framework, a real-time validation environment capable to simulate complex scenarios related to future air traffic management (ATM) conditions is of paramount importance. These facilities allow detailed testing and tuning of new technologies and procedures before executing flight tests. With such motivations, the Italian Aerospace Research Centre has developed the Integrated Simulation Facility (ISF) able to accurately reproduce ATM complex scenarios in real-time with hardware and human in-the-loop simulations, aiming to validate new ATM procedures and innovative system prototypes for RPAS and General Aviation aircraft. In the present work, the ISF facility has been used for reproducing relevant ATM scenarios to validate the functionalities of a Detect and Avoid system (DAA). The results of the ISF test campaign demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed algorithm in the autonomous resolution of mid-air collisions in presence of both air traffic and fixed obstacles (i.e. bad weather areas, no-fly-zone and terrain) and during critical flight phases, thus exceeding the current DAA state-of-the-art.

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.

The aim of this paper is the description of the CIRA's (Italian Aerospace Research Center) vision about GN&C (Guidance, Navigation and Control) technologies for RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft System). Specifically, the architecture (limiting to GN&C functions) of on-ground and on-board segments realized for the experimental CIRA RPAS will be described and compared with the recommendations of the international aviation authorities.