Israel: National Drone Initiative invests ILS60 million in 10 Companies for Series of Major Trials

Israel’s Nation­al Drone Ini­tia­tive is invest­ing ILS60 mil­lion with 10 com­pa­nies as part of a pilot project to exam­ine the use of large car­go drones and pas­sen­ger-car­ry­ing fly­ing taxis in con­trolled air­space, reports israeldefense.co.il. The sum is equiv­a­lent to around UKP15 mil­lion.

This is the Initiative’s sec­ond phase of tri­als after suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing the first between 2020 and 2022. Over 15,000 drone flights were car­ried out in var­i­ous loca­tions across Israel: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Hadera, Ramat Hasharon, Her­zliya, Modi’in, Yeruham and Beer­she­ba, as well as in 18 med­ical insti­tu­tions through­out the coun­try.

Begin­ning this Jan­u­ary, a num­ber of com­pa­nies are to par­tic­i­pate in one week of flights across the coun­try, every month, for the next two years or 24 major tri­als in total. The tests will take place nation­wide under man­aged air­space.

The drones are to car­ry heav­ier loads, includ­ing some that in the future will be capa­ble of pas­sen­ger trans­porta­tion. This pilot is to be car­ried out in coop­er­a­tion with the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty of Israel (CAAI), the Israeli Air Force, Israel Air­ports Author­i­ty (IAA) and oth­er rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry enti­ties.

(image: Air­wayz)

The com­pa­nies involved are:-

: Air­wayz Drones has an AI-based sys­tem for smart man­age­ment of air­space and drone fleets. The com­pa­ny will oper­ate two sys­tems: one for the dynam­ic man­age­ment of the drones’ air­space and a fleet man­age­ment sys­tem for the autonomous oper­a­tion of drone fleets for var­i­ous tasks with­in the con­fines of a smart city.

: F.T. Aer­i­al Solu­tions is work­ing to pro­vide remote­ly oper­at­ed air­craft ser­vices. The com­pa­ny offers oper­a­tions, train­ing, imple­men­ta­tion and inte­gra­tion ser­vices to sup­ply the best pos­si­ble solu­tion for each client. It is active in civ­il engi­neer­ing, con­struc­tion, agri­cul­ture, renew­able ener­gy and the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty indus­tries.

: Elsight pro­vides a reli­able and secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions solu­tion for the drone indus­try that allows var­i­ous par­ties to car­ry out BVLOS activ­i­ties.

: AGL is engaged in the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of sys­tems and con­trol rooms, writ­ing oper­a­tions and acti­va­tion pro­ce­dures for com­mand-and-con­trol rooms and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion train­ing and ongo­ing pro­fes­sion­al train­ing for avi­a­tion per­son­nel.

: ATI (Air Taxi Israel) is a ded­i­cat­ed AAM (advanced air mobil­i­ty) com­pa­ny in Israel that works in part­ner­ship with rel­e­vant avi­a­tion com­pa­nies involved in the project.

: Brook Avi­a­tion oper­ates heli­copter ser­vices. The com­pa­ny will oper­ate an eVTOL fleet along­side heli­copters and air­craft based on sim­i­lar flight char­ac­ter­is­tics.

: Down Wind is an air­craft man­u­fac­tur­er and air oper­a­tor spe­cial­is­ing in remote­ly manned air­craft.

: High-Lan­der pro­vides solu­tions that enable advanced autonomous aer­i­al com­mand and con­trol for man­ag­ing drone fleets. The com­pa­ny offers an end-to-end tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion for autonomous deliv­er­ies by drones from real-time load­ing and autonomous air­space man­age­ment to their arrival at the des­ti­na­tion.

(image: Can­do)

: Can­do Drones is a drone air­line. The com­pa­ny pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive solu­tion based on a sys­tem that includes the fol­low­ing com­po­nents: drone capa­bil­i­ties, unique com­mand, and con­trol soft­ware for their auto­mat­ic and autonomous oper­a­tion, as well as pro­fes­sion­al guid­ance for inte­grat­ing and max­imis­ing capa­bil­i­ties in the required activ­i­ty.

: Robot­i­can devel­ops ground and air-based mobile autonomous robot­ic sys­tems and is devel­op­ing fast-response drone-based solu­tions.

This new pilot aims to expand exper­i­ments with long-range air­craft car­ry­ing heavy loads. The goal is to cre­ate a com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger fly­ing taxi ser­vice. Part­ners include the Israel Inno­va­tion Author­i­ty, Ayalon High­ways, the Min­istry of Trans­porta­tion and CAAI, a unique nation­al and inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion between gov­ern­ment enti­ties, civ­il author­i­ties and indus­try part­ners.

Dror Bin, CEO of Israel Inno­va­tion Author­i­ty, com­ment­ed, “With the end of the first phase of fly­ing drones by dif­fer­ent oper­a­tors in the same man­aged air­space, Israeli com­pa­nies are record­ing impres­sive com­mer­cial achieve­ments in Israel and world­wide.”

He con­tin­ued, “Israel serves as a mod­el of a coun­try that devel­ops reg­u­la­tions and tech­nolo­gies to enable the man­age­ment and con­trol of the oper­a­tion of mul­ti­ple drones for var­i­ous needs and is rapid­ly approach­ing a con­tin­u­ous oper­at­ing mod­el that will enable low-alti­tude flights through­out the coun­try.”

Dror Bin (image: Han­na Taieb)

The areas to be cov­ered in the new pilot include:-

: For the first time in Israel, a demon­stra­tion of EHang air taxi drones by Israeli air oper­a­tors. These flights will be car­ried out with­out pas­sen­gers in the pre­lim­i­nary stages until sup­port­ing reg­u­la­to­ry approval is obtained.

: The oper­a­tion of het­ero­ge­neous drone net­works nation­wide in coop­er­a­tion with nation­al air traf­fic con­trol author­i­ties.

: Drone flights of dif­fer­ent mod­els, types and oper­a­tors in con­trolled air­space.

: The devel­op­ment of cus­tomer iden­ti­fi­ca­tion appli­ca­tions (Proof of Deliv­ery) to advance the imple­men­ta­tion of com­mer­cial ser­vices.

: Ini­tial attempts at plan­ning and imple­ment­ing ver­ti­ports for heavy elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing air­craft.

: Demon­strat­ing tech­nolo­gies and inno­v­a­tive oper­at­ing con­cepts to cre­ate and pro­mote aer­i­al logis­tics net­works.

At first, flight tests will be car­ried out in areas with­out human pres­ence. Lat­er ones will occur out over sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas with the goal of work­ing up to demon­strat­ing ser­vices with­in urban areas.

Ayalon High­ways will con­tin­ue to serve as the “beta site” for the tests and will facil­i­tate the over­sight of the oper­a­tions from its Com­mand and Con­trol Cen­tre in Gush Dan.

(News Source: https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/)

(top pic: Israel Nation­al Drone Ini­tia­tive)