Finland: New research centre for drone and UAM operations opens

Fin­land has respond­ed to grow­ing demand across Europe by open­ing a new research cen­tre for drone and UAM oper­a­tions. Named ‘The LIFT Future Aero­space Cen­tre’, built by Red­stone AERO and locat­ed at the Helsin­ki East Aero­drome, it aims to attract pri­vate, pub­lic and R&D sec­tors to cre­ate avi­a­tion inno­va­tions for the indus­try.

A state­ment from the VTT research agency web­site, an organ­i­sa­tion with over 80 years expe­ri­ence “in ground-break­ing research and sci­ence-based results”, said, “The coop­er­a­tion is aimed at strength­en­ing research, devel­op­ment and inno­va­tion in future avi­a­tion, while sup­port­ing the emer­gence of new busi­ness with­in this field in Fin­land.”

Tomi Oravasaari, Direc­tor of the RDI unit of NELI (North Euro­pean Logis­tics Insti­tute) at Xamk, is quot­ed: “The use of UAS in civ­il solu­tions and appli­ca­tions for author­i­ties has grown rapid­ly. How­ev­er, increas­ing this usage on a large scale will not be pos­si­ble before the oper­a­tions of unmanned avi­a­tion can be safe­ly inte­grat­ed with tra­di­tion­al manned avi­a­tion. Fin­land has excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ties and com­pe­tence to join the devel­op­ment of this future indus­try.”

He con­tin­ued, “The LIFT net­work coop­er­a­tion and the aero­drome envi­ron­ment pro­vide excel­lent sup­port for Xamk’s applied research and this paves the way for the emer­gence of com­mer­cial solu­tions for drone logis­tics, among oth­er things”.

Esa Kor­ju­la (Cred­it: Red­stone AERO)

The Helsin­ki-East Aero­drome area will act as a pro­to­type for effi­cient­ly oper­at­ing a new kind of aero­drome. Esa Kor­ju­la, Chair­man of Red­stone AERO, added, “At LIFT, we are devel­op­ing a con­cept that allows air­ports to be planned, built, licensed and oper­at­ed more effi­cient­ly than before. We call the new mod­el by the name dig­i­tal air­port.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.vttresearch.com/en

(Top pic: Helsin­ki East Aero­drome)