NATS Services Releases Whitepaper: “Advancing Aviation through Integration of Drones in the UK’s Low-Level Airspace.”

NATS Ser­vices has released a Whitepa­per enti­tled “Advanc­ing Avi­a­tion through Inte­gra­tion of Drones in the UK’s Low-Lev­el Air­space”, reports a press release. The Paper out­lines key learn­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions from the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of Project CAELUS, part of UKRI’s Future Flight Chal­lenge, which rep­re­sents a crit­i­cal step towards the safe and effi­cient inte­gra­tion of drones into the exist­ing air traf­fic man­age­ment envi­ron­ment.

The release explains, “Cen­tral to the project was the cre­ation and val­i­da­tion of a rev­o­lu­tion­ary new Con­cept of Oper­a­tions (CONOPs), which lays the ground­work for rou­tine drone oper­a­tions in the UK. It includes the devel­op­ment of ‘Mas­ter Con­trol Room’ (MCR) inter­face as a bridge between crewed and uncrewed air traf­fic oper­a­tions, some­thing NATS con­sid­ers essen­tial to achiev­ing a ful­ly inte­grat­ed air­space.”

Via both sim­u­lat­ed and live flight tri­als, NATS was able to show how tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped for the MCR could be used to safe­ly inte­grate uncrewed traf­fic in con­trolled and uncon­trolled air­space, while min­imis­ing dis­rup­tion to cur­rent air traf­fic oper­a­tions.

The release con­tin­ues, “This includ­ed the use of intel­li­gent air­space man­age­ment tools to autho­rise low-alti­tude, Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone flight plans, pro­vid­ing decon­flic­tion advice and instruc­tions to drone oper­a­tors and mon­i­tor­ing noti­fi­ca­tions relat­ed to air­space restric­tions and spe­cif­ic mis­sions. All this was achieved while main­tain­ing over­sight to ensure safe and effi­cient oper­a­tions.”

Richard Ellis, New Air­space Users Direc­tor, NATS Ser­vices, com­ment­ed, “By suc­cess­ful­ly oper­at­ing BVLOS flights, val­i­dat­ing the CONOPs and our Mas­ter Con­trol Room con­cept, we have tak­en a sig­nif­i­cant step towards real­is­ing the full poten­tial of drone tech­nol­o­gy for health­care and oth­er indus­tries.”

He con­tin­ued, “We are now eager to con­tin­ue to work with indus­try and reg­u­la­tors to trans­late these learn­ings into a clear path­way for com­mer­cial drone oper­a­tions in the UK and beyond.”

Richard Ellis

Oth­er key find­ings high­light­ed by NATS include the crit­i­cal need for strong part­ner­ships across the entire avi­a­tion ecosys­tem like the use of cloud-based tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port high-fideli­ty data shar­ing, allow­ing all stake­hold­ers to oper­ate in real time with a com­mon under­stand­ing of the air­space.

Gareth Bowen, New Air­space Users Solu­tions Con­sul­tant, NATS Ser­vices, remarked, “While Project CAELUS has suc­cess­ful­ly demon­strat­ed the fea­si­bil­i­ty of safe and inte­grat­ed drone oper­a­tions, we recog­nise the crit­i­cal need for addi­tion­al research into data-dri­ven intel­li­gent oper­a­tions. The future of drone inte­gra­tion depends on a sys­tem capa­ble of effec­tive­ly analysing mas­sive amounts of data, pre­dict­ing, and mit­i­gat­ing poten­tial con­flicts, and opti­mis­ing oper­a­tions to accom­mo­date the expect­ed increase in drone traf­fic.” Adding, “This approach will be crit­i­cal for the long-term scal­a­bil­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the drone indus­try.”

The Whitepa­per is avail­able for down­load from the NATS web­site:- 

Project CAELUS White paper — NATS

For more infor­ma­tion 

www.nats.aero  

(Top image: CAELUS Project — NATS)

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