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UK: Open Skies Cornwall Completes “Ship-to-Shore Trial Flights in Falmouth Harbour,” Paving Way for Atlantic Maritime Delivery

Drones flew over the UK’s first ‘drone-friend­ly’ har­bour in Fal­mouth last week as part of ship-to-shore flight tests car­ried out by Open Skies Corn­wall, reports a press release.

The release explains, “The flights are part of a series of tri­als test­ing Fal­mouth Harbour’s ground infra­struc­ture, fly­ing capa­bil­i­ties and air­space for future mar­itime-focused drone activ­i­ties, such as emer­gency med­ical, food bunker­ing or main­te­nance sup­plies deliv­er­ies. Fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of these tri­als, Open Skies Cornwall’s aspi­ra­tions are to fly sor­ties for real-world use cas­es to large civil­ian ves­sels at strate­gic moor­ings in the har­bour and to inter­cept ves­sels up to 50 miles off­shore in the Atlantic Ocean/Celtic Sea, pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al resilience con­nec­tiv­i­ty to mar­itime work­forces at sea.”

These tri­als iden­ti­fied four land­ing loca­tions in Fal­mouth Har­bour, where sen­sors were employed to test  key infra­struc­ture in the har­bour as well as mon­i­tor air­craft move­ments and back-end soft­ware updates. The release con­tin­ues, “New land­ing loca­tions and fly­ing routes along the Cor­nish coast towards Truro were also vis­it­ed thanks to facil­i­ta­tion work along the upper reach­es of the Fal Estu­ary by Port of Truro and Corn­wall Coun­cil.”

Gareth What­more, CEO of DronePrep and project lead for Open Skies Corn­wall, com­ment­ed, “Ship-to-shore flights offer huge poten­tial to add val­ue for Fal­mouth Harbour’s com­mu­ni­ty, but it’s impor­tant we work close­ly with all stake­hold­ers to ensure those inno­va­tions oper­ate safe­ly and inte­grate smooth­ly with exist­ing infra­struc­ture. These tri­als are essen­tial for design­ing and test­ing infra­struc­ture and pro­ce­dures spe­cif­ic to Fal­mouth Har­bour.”

He con­tin­ued, “Pro­vid­ing mar­itime drone ser­vices on a reg­u­lar basis means iden­ti­fy­ing suit­able take off and land­ing loca­tions that will work for the har­bour dur­ing the busiest times of the year and includ­ing this infor­ma­tion in the Drone Deliv­ery Reg­is­ter. By iden­ti­fy­ing the best solu­tions for this envi­ron­ment, we can also pre­pare for long-dis­tance, Atlantic capa­bil­i­ty with­in air­space that is inte­grat­ed for both drones and con­ven­tion­al air­craft. This is cur­rent­ly being worked up via the Sky-High­ways conops in part­ner­ship with the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty.”

Fal­mouth Har­bour

Open Skies Corn­wall is a research and devel­op­ment project involv­ing nine indus­try-lead­ing com­pa­nies (Corn­wall Coun­cil, DronePrep, Fal­mouth Har­bour, JHUBMED, Neu­ron, NHS Corn­wall and Isles of Scil­ly, Roy­al Mail, Sky­ports, Uni­ver­si­ty of Southamp­ton). Togeth­er, they aim to unlock four Cor­nish air­space envi­ron­ments for the next gen­er­a­tion of unmanned air­craft while estab­lish­ing a net­work of ‘Sky­high­ways’ to con­nect remote com­mu­ni­ties via drones. 

Led by DronePrep, the project has received UKP2.4 mil­lion in fund­ing from the UK Research and Inno­va­tion (UKRI) Future Flight Chal­lenge. This fund­ing will be used to build ground and land­ing infra­struc­ture, estab­lish unmanned traf­fic man­age­ment sen­sor net­works, com­mis­sion new unmanned air­craft, and estab­lish Sky­high­ways to sup­port med­ical and com­mod­i­ty deliv­ery for the NHS, Roy­al Mail, Corn­wall Coun­cil, JHUBMED, and mul­ti­ple users of Fal­mouth Har­bour. 

Miles Car­den, CEO at Fal­mouth Har­bour, remarked, “The effi­cien­cy, safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits of using drones for com­mer­cial mar­itime activ­i­ty are very excit­ing and could poten­tial­ly dri­ve sig­nif­i­cant addi­tion­al eco­nom­ic val­ue to Fal­mouth. We hope to accel­er­ate the planned tests and use today’s oper­a­tions as a spring­board for new activ­i­ty right through 2024.”

(Sky­ports Drone — Cred­it: Open Skies Corn­wall)

Rhys Git­toes, Open Skies Corn­wall project lead at Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices, added, “Our flights in Fal­mouth Har­bour are part of our broad­er efforts to demon­strate, tri­al and test use cas­es for drone ser­vices across the UK. The first step, deliv­er­ing to a pon­toon in Falmouth’s estu­ary, is an impor­tant mile­stone that we will build on through­out 2024, with both our Open Skies Corn­wall project and oth­er ongo­ing UK flight pro­grammes.”

Back­ground

The UK Research and Inno­va­tion Future Flight Chal­lenge is a UKP300 mil­lion pro­gram, co-fund­ed by gov­ern­ment and indus­try, that is sup­port­ing the cre­ation of the avi­a­tion ecosys­tem need­ed to accel­er­ate the intro­duc­tion of advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) drones and elec­tric sub-region­al air­craft in the UK. 

Deliv­ered by Inno­vate UK and the Eco­nom­ic and Social Research Coun­cil, the pro­gram works with indus­try, acad­e­mia, gov­ern­ment, and reg­u­la­tors to trans­form how we con­nect peo­ple, trans­port goods, and deliv­er ser­vices in a sus­tain­able way that pro­vides socio-eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits using new types of air vehi­cles with nov­el tech­nolo­gies.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://future-flight.bsigroup.com/clubs/8‑open-skies-cornwall/

https://droneprep.uk/

https://www.ukri.org/

(Top image: Team at Open Skies Corn­wall)

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