NASA Taps Reliable’s Pilotless Caravan for UAS Trials at Airports

As part of its ongoing efforts to advance the integration of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System, NASA has contracted Reliable Robotics to conduct flight demonstrations with its highly automated Cessna 208B Grand Caravan at and around airports and gather data that will inform future UAS performance standards. 

During the data-collection campaign, Reliable will also demonstrate contingency management procedures for scenarios such as lost datalinks and degraded or denied GPS environments. 

Reliable’s remotely piloted Caravan is equipped with an advanced autopilot and navigation system that automates all phases of flight, including taxi, takeoff, and landing. The California-based company has already demonstrated the Reliable Autonomy System (RAS) in flights without a pilot on board.

For this NASA campaign, provisioned through a small business innovation and research (SBIR) Phase III contract, the experimental aircraft will demonstrate uncrewed regional cargo flight operations “in a terminal area in which maneuvers, procedures, ATC interactions, and implications of visual clearances for remotely piloted operations are assessed,” the company said in a December 10 statement.

“Reliable Robotics is working with NASA to determine the location for rehearsal flights, and the final flight demonstration will take place between Mojave Air and Space Port/Rutan Field and Edwards Air Force Base, pending any updates based on operational requirements or logistical considerations,” a company spokesperson told AIN. “All data collection flights and the final demonstration flight will be completed by Q3 of 2026.”

After the campaign wraps up, Reliable will provide all of the flight data it collected to NASA, the FAA, and standards development organizations. According to Reliable, those rulemakers will use the data to inform and validate minimum operational performance standards (MOPS), which define requirements for specific airborne systems and equipment, and minimum aviation system performance standards (MASPS), which govern the broader aviation ecosystem, including UAS traffic management systems.

“This testing campaign comes at a unique moment in time, when safety-enhancing aircraft autonomy is rapidly nearing FAA certification and entry into service for regional air cargo and military use cases,” said Reliable co-founder and CEO Robert Rose. “Efforts like this are how we continue to advance the necessary public policy ecosystem.” 

The $1 million SBIR Phase III contract award comes just a few months after Reliable and NASA formed a partnership under the Space Act Agreement to scale UAS capabilities for air cargo operations. The partners have previously collaborated on detect-and-avoid testing to validate the use of surveillance radars. Reliable has also been working with the U.S. Air Force to introduce and develop standards for autonomous military aircraft, including the RAS-equipped Caravan.