Integrating drones in urban airspaces European demonstration programme begins at Cranfield University

Air mobil­i­ty urban large exper­i­men­tal demon­stra­tions (AMU-LED) is a new Euro­pean project now being test­ed to man­age air­space traf­fic and to check safe­ty, inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and fea­si­bil­i­ty.

The first tri­al demon­stra­tion took place at Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty UK on 30 June, and will be fol­lowed by oth­er tri­al events in the Nether­lands in August 2022, and Spain in Sep­tem­ber 2022.

One of the key enablers for urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) is the U‑space eco-sys­tem, an air traf­fic man­age­ment frame­work com­pris­ing a spe­cif­ic set of ser­vices and pro­ce­dures based on dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and automa­tion to ensure safe and effi­cient access to air­space for a large num­ber of drones.

U‑space is more auto­mat­ed than cur­rent air traf­fic con­trol, with less human inter­ac­tion and the capac­i­ty to han­dle more flights simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, while AMU-LED is a very large-scale demon­stra­tion (VLD) project fund­ed by the Sin­gle Euro­pean Sky ATM Research 3 (SESAR) Joint Under­tak­ing under the Euro­pean Union’s Hori­zon 2020 research and inno­va­tion pro­gramme.

In a series of demos, the project will use large eVTOL plat­forms for pas­sen­ger and car­go trans­port, com­bined with small­er unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems (UAS) deliv­er­ing goods and med­ical sup­plies, and sur­veil­lance or sup­port for emer­gency ser­vices.

The infor­ma­tion strate­gic and tac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion pri­or and dur­ing the flight, real time infor­ma­tion about the posi­tion of the drone, and advi­so­ry tac­ti­cal decon­flic­tion ser­vice to avoid con­flicts pri­or to and dur­ing the flight, by using weath­er and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, nav­i­ga­tion and sur­veil­lance (CNS) data.

Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor Gokhan Inal­han, who is lead­ing the autonomous sys­tems and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence project, said: “The flight demon­stra­tions will put into prac­tice sce­nar­ios, con­cepts and sys­tems devel­oped through­out the project to test how drones and manned air­craft can oper­ate safe­ly in the same air­space.

“We will run vir­tu­al flights along­side drones phys­i­cal­ly fly­ing at the air­port to test their inter­ac­tions and air traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tems, includ­ing U‑Space, so our results will move for­ward the whole con­cept of UAM.

NTT DATA Spain coor­di­nates a Euro­pean con­sor­tium of 17 dif­fer­ent enti­ties that take part in AMU-LED. Project leader Pablo Menén­dez-Ponte Alon­so clar­i­fied: “After our con­sor­tium devised and imple­ment­ed oper­a­tions for UAM, we are at last ready for take-off.”

There will be six demon­stra­tions in total, tak­ing place through­out sum­mer of 2022, in Cran­field (UK), Ams­ter­dam (NL), Enschede (NL), Rot­ter­dam (NL), and San­ti­a­go de Com­postela (SP).

In Feb­ru­ary 2021, EHang joined two Euro­pean projects to inte­grate unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles into urban air­spaces, includ­ing one which aims to use the tech­nol­o­gy to ensure health­care is acces­si­ble to every­one liv­ing in its mem­ber states.

The pre­vi­ous month, EHang joined AMU-LED to con­duct flight tests of its eVTOL air­craft in the Nether­lands, Spain and the UK.