ICUAS 2015 - International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems

The 2015 ICUAS will be held on June 9-12 in the Mile High City, in Denver, CO. After meetings in Dubai, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Orlando, we decided to return to the beautiful city of Denver and the State of Colorado, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. June 9 will be a Workshop/Tutorial day, followed by a three-day technical Conference.
Judging from the interest ICUAS has drawn over the past seven years and its growth, ICUAS'15 is expected to continue on this path and attract the highest number of participants from academia, industry, federal/state agencies, government, the private sector, users, practitioners and engineers who wish to be affiliated with and contribute technically to this highly demanding and rapidly evolving and expanding field.
ICUAS'15 will be fully sponsored by the ICUAS Association, a non-profit organization; Information about the organization may be found at www.icuas.com. The theme of ICUAS'15 will focus on the very challenging and timely topic of 'integrating UAS into the national airspace'.
Several factors contributed to choosing to host the conference in Denver: Colorado is one of the top three states in the U.S. in Aerospace industry; the Denver metropolitan area is home of major companies like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Colorado is home of more than 1,000 aerospace companies; Colorado also has several well-known Universities with major research and development activities in unmanned systems.
ICUAS'15 aims to bring together different groups of qualified military and civilian representatives worldwide, organization representatives, funding agencies, industry and academia, to discuss the current state of UAS advances, and the roadmap to their full utilization in civilian and public domains. Special emphasis will be given to current and future research opportunities, and to 'what comes next' in terms of the essential technologies that need to be utilized to advance further UAS.
The next generation of UAS is expected to be used for a wide spectrum of civilian and public domain applications. Challenges to be faced and overcome include: see-and-avoid, sense-detect-and-avoid systems, robust and fault-tolerant flight control systems, payloads, communications, levels of autonomy, manned-unmanned swarms, network-controlled swarms, as well as challenges related to policies, procedures, regulations, safety, risk analysis assessment, airworthiness, certification issues, operational constraints, standardization and frequency management. As advances in these areas become a reality through 'smart', 'environmentally friendly' cutting edge technologies they will pave the way towards full integration of UAS with manned aviation and into the respective national airspace.
Through Keynote/Plenary addresses, invited and solicited presentations, and round table discussions, it is expected that the outcome of the Conference will be a better understanding of what industry, the military and civilian national and international authorities need, and what are the crucial next steps that need to be completed before UAS are widely accepted in everyday life applications.
ICUAS'15 will feature several kinds of presentations including contributed and invited papers, special sessions, Tutorials and Workshops. A novel feature of ICUAS'15 will be an open industrial forum where industry representatives will discuss relevant problems that need be solved in order to improve UAS safety and reliability and eventually integrate UAS into the national airspace.
The venue is the Denver Marriott Tech Center, www.Marriott.com/DENTC, an outstanding facility from which participants can easily reach via the Light Rail the heart of Denver in the 16th Street Mall and pedestrian area, and Lower Downtown (LODO), or the Park Meadows Shopping Mall. The hotel also provides a complimentary 5 mile shuttle to get to area attractions and restaurants easily.
Topics of Interest
ICUAS'15 topics of interest include, but will not be be limited to:
Airspace Control Integration See-and-avoid Systems
Airspace Management Interoperability Security
Airworthiness Levels of Safety Sensor Fusion
Air Vehicle Operations Manned/Unmanned Aviation Simulation
Autonomy Micro- and Mini- UAS Smart Sensors
Biologically Inspired UAS Navigation Standardization
Certification Networked Swarms Swarms
Control Architectures Payloads Technology Challenges
Energy Efficient UAS Path Planning Training
Environmental Issues Regulations UAS Applications
Fail-Safe Systems Reliability of UAS UAS Communications
Frequency Management Risk Analysis UAS Testbeds
About Denver
Denver is a metropolitan city, the capital of the U.S. state of Colorado and the jewel of the Rocky Mountain area. Due to its elevation of one mile, or 5,280 feet (1,609 m) above sea level, Denver is nicknamed the "Mile-High City". The main attractions in the Downtown Denver include:
Colorado State Capitol
Denver Art Museum
Denver U.S. Mint
Larimer Square
LoDo (Lower Downtown) Historic District
Confluence Park
Other must-see attractions include the City Park, Denver Zoo, Botanical Gardens, Cherry Creek Shopping District, Red Rocks Amphitheatre and Buffalo Bill Museum. Details and more information may be found through www.denver.org.
About the State of Colorado
Colorado is the only state that is an almost perfect rectangle. Writers over a hundred years ago called it "The Highest State", and it is the highest state, with the average elevation 6,800 feet above sea level. The highest point in Colorado is Mount Elbert, 14,431 feet above sea level. Colorado has more than 1,000 peaks above 10,000 feet and 54 peaks that top 14,000 feet. Colorado became a state in 1876, when the United States of America celebrated its one-hundredth birthday. This is why it is called "the Centennial State".
The state has been named for the Colorado River; Colorado in Spanish means 'red' or 'ruddy'. The state flower is the blue/lavender columbine, the state bird is the lark bunting, the state animal is the bighorn sheep and the state tree is the Colorado blue spruce.
The first human beings, the first Coloradans, came to Colorado about 15,000 B.C. These first arrivals were hunters and food gatherers who had migrated to North America from Asia. They were called Paleo-Indian, which means 'ancient people who made stone tools'. About 2,000 years ago new influences came from the south (from today's Mexico) and the culture evolved to what is known today as Anasazi, a Navajo word meaning "Ancient Ones". Other Native Americans have also been found to have explored the eastern plains of Colorado, while modern tribes include the Apache, the Comanche, the Arapaho and the Cheyenne, and the Utes.
The state of Colorado has been destination point for explorers, trappers, traders, miners, cowboys and farmers. The state faced an almost 270 year war, the longest 'civil war' between whites and Indians who both called North America home.
Today, Colorado is one of the most advanced states in the U.S., with diverse high tech industry, much above national average educated population.
For more information, see i.) T. J. Noel, D. A. Smith, Colorado - The Highest State, University Press of Colorado, 1995, and, ii.) M. Sprague, Colorado, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976.