Marty Rogers

Background

About Marty Rogers

The Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration (ACUASI) is a part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks system. We provide unmanned aircraft support for research and development, science and technology, and real-world operational missions with a primary focus on Alaska and the Arctic, but we also support missions across North America and internationally including operations in Chile, South Africa, and Iceland. We manage and operate a fleet of over 100 fixed-wing and rotary-wing UAS in geographically remote and climatically challenging locations and fly over 150 days per year.Update: June 2016. Our UAS Test Site program is quite busy, and beyond our original team of Oregon, Hawaii, Alaska, and Iceland we have partnered with Mississippi State University and Griffon Aerospace of Madison, Alabama. Just in the past month we audited Drone Design's Hawaii on Lanai, and based on the positive results of the audit have added their program to the UAF team. Their program on Lanai is impressive with a great team. The UAF team enjoyed the AUVSI event in New Orleans, and were able to take delivery of our SeaHunter at the event. We also did a bit of shopping for an ISR payload, and selected the Trillium Model 50 as the match to the SeaHunter. Griffon Aerospace will be integrating the payload in the coming weeks. The remainder of 2016 is lining up to be as busy as the first half, and I would not be surprised if we ended up with over 200 flying days this year, a first. Also, we presented at the Alma, Quebec UAS conference the first week of June, discussing Arctic research, test and evaluation, and the FAA's UAS Center of Excellence, the ASSURE program. I'm taking on the role as Executive Director of ASSURE effective 1 July, and there is some genuinely value-adding UAS research currently underway. The program has 22 university, and over 110 industry partners, and is privileged to be funded by the FAA.