Geospatial World 02/01/2021 2 Minutes Read NASA will be funding a major project led by Austin University of Texas for the future of autonomous air cargo transportation. The project will research developing methods that could be used to validate the cost and scalability of conceptual autonomous cargo operations. They will be providing theory and concepts for all types of vehicles – from large unmanned cargo aircraft crossing the U.S. to the single drone that can drop a package in residential neighborhoods. Ufuk Topcu, Lead Investigator, Professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics, and director of the Autonomous Systems Group in the Oden Institute said, “Public concerns such as noise pollution, privacy or perceived risks of autonomous operations are usually addressed in a post-hoc analysis. This approach is not only costly but tends to have a limited impact. We are using mathematical models to represent public concerns that characterize their relative importance with other factors in the overall process.”