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Honeywell, Frequentis Demonstrate “Advanced Ground Control Station for eVTOL Aircraft, Reach Major Milestone”

Hon­ey­well and Fre­quen­tis, have reached a major mile­stone in advanc­ing the oper­a­tion of remote­ly pilot­ed air­craft in Euro­pean air­space as part of the SESAR Joint Under­tak­ing (Oper­ate Any­where) project con­sor­tium, reports a press release. 

Via a suc­cess­ful flight test in June that took place in Amstet­ten, Aus­tria, Hon­ey­well show­cased a new ground con­trol sta­tion (GCS) for eVTOL air­craft, lever­ag­ing new func­tion­al­i­ties of the two-dis­play GCS that is also oper­at­ed from Honeywell’s Brno research and devel­op­ment facil­i­ty. 

With a col­lab­o­ra­tive inter­face with air traf­fic con­trol, the GCS oper­a­tor was able to receive com­mands orig­i­nat­ed by air traf­fic con­trol to increase oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy through real-time data exchange with dif­fer­ent sys­tems.  This devel­op­ment paves the way for safer and more effi­cient uncrewed air­craft oper­a­tions

David Shill­i­day, VP and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) at Hon­ey­well Aero­space Tech­nolo­gies, remarked, “These demon­stra­tions are a crit­i­cal step toward inte­grat­ing AAM sys­tems into every­day air­space, promis­ing sig­nif­i­cant advance­ments in drone oper­a­tions.”

Aus­tria-based Fre­quen­tis, a glob­al sup­pli­er of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and infor­ma­tion sys­tems for con­trol cen­tres with safe­ty-crit­i­cal tasks, pro­vid­ed enhanced U‑space ser­vices for the flight test, includ­ing mis­sion con­for­mance mon­i­tor­ing and tac­ti­cal con­flict detec­tion. 

An exam­ple of a Ground Con­trol Sta­tion (This one pro­duced by Jouav)

The release explains, “U‑space, a new air traf­fic man­age­ment envi­ron­ment for unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems, uses a set of new ser­vices based on a high degree of digi­ti­sa­tion, automa­tion of func­tions and spe­cif­ic pro­ce­dures cre­at­ed to safe­ly allow a large num­ber of drones with­in an air­space.”

It goes on, “Using both sim­u­lat­ed and real drones, Honeywell’s ground con­trol sta­tion also demon­strat­ed the ini­tial imple­men­ta­tion of a ground-based detect and avoid solu­tion, a safe­ty tool designed to make drone flights safer and more reli­able, espe­cial­ly in uncon­trolled air­space.”

These tri­als mark an impor­tant step in the Hon­ey­well-led Project OperA, one of the two projects award­ed through the lat­est round of fund­ing from the Euro­pean Union’s SESAR 3 Joint Under­tak­ing. Project OperA focus­es on build­ing solu­tions for com­plex oper­a­tions of AAM, pilot­ed eVTOL air­craft and uncrewed car­go air­craft in real-life Euro­pean air­space.

Gün­ter Graf (Cred­it: Fre­quen­tis)

Gün­ter Graf, VP of New Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at Fre­quen­tis, com­ment­ed, “The OperA research project pro­vides us with an inno­v­a­tive envi­ron­ment to enhance exist­ing solu­tions and devel­op new tech­nolo­gies.” 

He con­tin­ued, “The val­i­da­tion exer­cise in Amstet­ten was a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in ensur­ing the seam­less inte­gra­tion of the extend­ed and high­ly auto­mat­ed U‑space ser­vices, includ­ing mis­sion con­for­mance mon­i­tor­ing and tac­ti­cal con­flict detec­tion, with Hon­ey­well’s ground con­trol sta­tion and data exchange in real time.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.honeywell.com/us/en

https://www.frequentis.com/en

(Top image: Hon­ey­well)

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