This week on Dawn of Autonomy, we continue our “UTM and Infrastructure” month, sponsored by Airspace Link, with Trevor Woods from the Northern Plains UAS Test Site, home of North Dakota’s groundbreaking Vantis network. Trevor serves as Executive Director of the test site and helped shape the original concept for Vantis, the first statewide BVLOS UAS system in the United States.
In this episode, Trevor explains how Vantis combines aviation grade surveillance, command and control, and UTM services into shared infrastructure that lets operators run recurring BVLOS missions at scale rather than one off trials. He discusses what it takes to design and administer a statewide network, how FAA processes like NTAP and BVLOS waivers interact with infrastructure based safety mitigations, and why North Dakota’s ecosystem has become a proving ground for delivery, inspection, public safety, and AAM use cases.
Tune in for a deep dive into how the Northern Plains UAS Test Site and Vantis are turning BVLOS from a waiver exercise into an infrastructure enabled service, and what this work signals about the future of UTM, airspace integration, and cross state autonomy corridors.
