Texas A&M RELLIS Campus provides venue for cutting-edge drone research
By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill
In the future instead of toiling in the sun, farmers could be sitting in an comfortable office, coordinating fleets of robots, comprising UAVs and terrestrial vehicles, to autonomously perform tasks such as seeding fields and managing crops, thanks to the kind of cutting-edge research being conducted at the Texas A&M University RELLIS campus.
In an interview at the recent Xponential 2025 conference in Houston, Brad Hall director of operations at the RELLIS Campus, said the applied research campus in Bryan, Texas is open to researchers from the Texas A&M University System’s 11 universities and eight state agencies, and provides research facilities and support to outside government entities and companies.
“I think we’re on the leading edge of drone technology in terms of whether it’s unmanned systems in the water, unmanned systems in the air, or unmanned systems on the ground,” Hall said.
“This is about providing a ready, relevant, realistic environment for people to come to work in. Whether it’s our own researcher or anyone, and we’re open to work with all,” he said.
With more than 25,000 students, the Texas A&M University boasts the largest college of engineering in the United States. The RELLIS Campus is the only combined center of research, education and innovation of its kind in the Lone Star State. RELLIS stands for the six Texas A&M Aggies’ core values: respect, excellence, leadership, loyalty, integrity, and selfless service.
Hall said the campus’s aerospace engineering program has been involved in all phases of UAS research since the beginning of the drone age. “We have multiple professors that do varying different aspects of drone work, whether it’s control systems, whether it’s the aircraft themselves, or whether it’s the application of drones,” he said.
“One of the aspects that we’ve been working towards, not just for drones, but in all environments, is the idea of lab-to-life. So, you work in your lab and then at some point, it all needs to be real,” he said.
As an example, the fore-mentioned study on the use of robotic tools in agriculture represents a collaboration of the university system’s RELLIS and Corpus Christ campuses. The research, taking place in the cotton fields of South Texas, seeks to analyze swarm behavior by coordinating the work of agricultural UAVs with unmanned vehicles that are operating autonomously on the ground.
“The study is trying to determine how the swarm behaves as a collective, both on the ground and in the air, and then how do they talk to one another,” Hall said. The UAVs involved in the study are performing spraying or mapping functions while the terrestrial robot vehicles are working to complete agricultural tasks that must be accomplished on the ground level.
He said this study serves as just one example of how researchers at the campus are not limited just to learning about aviation, but are also looking into how aerial drones can fit into the larger universe of robotics and autonomous vehicles.
Proving Grounds provides ideal setting for UAS research
Located on the site of a former U.S. Air Force base, the RELLIS Campus boasts facilities that make it the ideal site for UAV studies. The 2,500-acre RELLIS Proving Grounds is designed to address requirements across disciplines, including transportation, national security, material science, aviation and spectrum-related research.
The Proving Grounds features controlled access to 80-plus miles of single-lane paved surface, with five concrete runways and apron surface. In order to conduct UAS operations, the facility has earned several FAA approvals, including:
- Part 91 certificate of airworthiness (COA) to operate UAS beyond visual line of sight, up to 400 feet above ground level (AGL)
- Part 91 COA to operate small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) up to 1,000 feet AGL.
- Part 91 COA to operate UAS over 55 pounds, up to 400 feet
- Part 91 COA for one-to-many UAS.
Researchers conducting UAS projects also have controlled access to more than 15,000 acres of remote farmland. In addition to being used for UAS research, the Proving Grounds offers a controlled environment for testing autonomous ground vehicles, military equipment and intelligent infrastructure.
Hall said the some of the research into the use of autonomous vehicles begun at the RELLIS Campus has led to commercial applications. “There have been several students that have spun off from our universities and who have started their own businesses in this field,” he said. “We’re talking about autonomous systems, not just autonomous drones, but also autonomous trucks, autonomous cars.”
As an institution dedicated to being open to researchers of all types, the RELLIS Campus also has opened its facilities to various agencies of the federal government.
“It’s not classified, but one of our institutes has been working in Project Conversance,” Hall said. Project Convergence is a U.S. Army program to develop capabilities for the Defense Department’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control effort. “They’re talking about working in denied environments, whether it’s GPS-denied or signal-denied, or contested environment. We’ve also been working with some Army acquisition-level programs on their unmanned systems.”
In addition, the campus has hosted researchers from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, studying the development of drone-mounted sensors.
Private companies that have used the RELLIS campus research facilities include aerospace and defense conglomerate RTX, formerly Raytheon Technologies Corporation, and Kodiak Robotics and Embark Trucks, two producers of self-driving tractor-trailers and other autonomous vehicles. Recently, Energy Transfer, a major energy pipeline and storage company, held a truck rodeo at the campus.
Working with outside third parties has the added benefit of giving Texas A&M undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to be exposed to the kind of technology they’ll eventually be working with when they enter the real world.
“That’s really the true mission of what our campus is trying to do, to bring the total ecosystem together — people, facilities and values,” Hall said.
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Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, a professional drone services marketplace, and a fascinated observer of the emerging drone industry and the regulatory environment for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles focused on the commercial drone space and is an international speaker and recognized figure in the industry. Miriam has a degree from the University of Chicago and over 20 years of experience in high tech sales and marketing for new technologies.
For drone industry consulting or writing, Email Miriam.
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