Sonoma County drone startup gets Air Force contract to help make airports safer
A Petaluma engineer and Oklahoma university professor are flying high after discovering the U.S. Air Force wants them to continue developing a specialty drone that tests airport instrument landing systems.
Jump Aero, a startup co-founded by Carl Dietrich in June 2019 to develop specialized drones, was granted a $147,140 contract to calibrate the systems in commercial and military airports. The “STTR” contract agreement announced on March 10 involves research work partnering the aircraft company with Oklahoma State University. The Air Force program is called Agility Prime.
The Midwestern academic aerospace hub has worked with the Federal Aviation Administration for a few years in attempting to come up with a miniaturized device to test the equipment, OSU Chairman and Professor of Aerospace Engineering Jamey Jacob told the Business Journal.
Airport beacons monitor the glide slope — the path an aircraft takes as it approaches a runway.
“If it’s off, the aircraft may miss the runway,” said Jacob, who runs the university’s Unmanned Systems Research Institute.
According to the FAA, the instrument landing systems provide vertical and horizontal navigation guidance information to pilots on approach and landing. The FAA monitors the ‘ILS’ equipment to “ensure its reliability and precision.”
The specialty drone is designed to save the government “20 times” the amount of money it pays for jets to do a flyby to perform the same functions, Dietrich insisted, further estimating the cost of the flyby tests at $5,000 an hour.
The new Phase 1 contract’s supporting documentation reads: “Jump Aero has partnered with Oklahoma State University to develop an unmanned aircraft specifically to calibrate airport Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) for the FAA and DoD (U.S. Department of Defense.)”
Dietrich, who studied engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology based in Cambridge, created the prototype of the drone that carries a radio package intended to retrieve the signals from the airport equipment. They are due to be built in a facility in Chelsea, Massachusetts The device has the potential of ensuring the safety in 52 public-use airports in the United States.
“These are some of the largest underutilized infrastructure facilities we have. We could make better use of personal aviation,” he said.
It’s all in a day’s work to Dietrich. The 44-year-old technology whiz, chief designer and president of the company has maintained a long penchant for flight and technology.
“I’ve loved aviation as long as I can remember,” he told the Business Journal.
Dietrich’s infatuation started early, reading up on aerospace engineering. At age 8, he got his pilot’s license, he said.
Before founding Jump Aero, he spent over a decade building manned aircraft at Terrafugia, a Woburn, Massachusetts company known for its work on flying cars.
Dietrich’s visions of the future of aviation don’t end with airports. Currently, he’s operated the company on seed money from family and friends. But his long-term goal involves building a manned emergency-specific aircraft designed to deliver first responders to the scene of emergencies. The plan would involve him approaching venture capitalists and finding a new office to proceed.
The manned paramedic spacecraft is the kind of advancement Dietrich refers to as “leap tall buildings” technology — hence the Jump Aero name. To Dietrich, developing vehicles to ensure the safety of society shows “how good this technology can be.”
“The promise is there,” he said.
