New trials Advance UK Closer Towards Daily BVLOS Drone Deliveries

The UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) has cho­sen six tri­al projects that advances the momen­tous time of dai­ly BVLOS drone deliv­er­ies, reports a press release. Among those includ­ed are schemes that involve drone health­care trans­porta­tion, ener­gy infra­struc­ture and ‘sky high­ways’.

The CAA had invit­ed organ­i­sa­tions to bid to par­tic­i­pate in an inno­va­tion sand­box ear­li­er this year to val­i­date and test their con­cepts, sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment of BVLOS capa­bil­i­ties.

The release explains, “Sand­box­es are con­trolled envi­ron­ments where organ­i­sa­tions can test their inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies against the exist­ing reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work, help­ing appli­cants max­imise the readi­ness of their inno­va­tion, and also help the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty devel­op bet­ter, more effi­cient ways to devel­op new reg­u­la­tions.”

Projects include Api­an Lon­don Health Bridge; Cran­field Air­port and Project BLUEPRINT; Droneprep Open Skies Corn­wall; Hex­Cam; Sky­ports Project TRA­ject; and Snow­do­nia Aero­space Cen­tre Project Drag­ons Eye.

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Sophie O’Sullivan, Head of Future Safe­ty and Inno­va­tion at the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, com­ment­ed, “Our inno­va­tion sand­box­es play a piv­otal role in our ongo­ing mis­sion to devel­op effi­cient, for­ward-think­ing reg­u­la­tions that will allow dif­fer­ent types of air­craft to use the same air­space.”

She con­tin­ued, “The cho­sen projects encom­pass a range of crit­i­cal appli­ca­tions, includ­ing med­ical deliv­er­ies and infra­struc­ture sur­vey­ing. They high­light the vary­ing role that drones could play in the avi­a­tion ecosys­tem and the tri­als will pro­vide invalu­able insights into how we inte­grate drones safe­ly with exist­ing air­space users.”

These new tests will help devel­op plans for how drones can be safe­ly inte­grat­ed with oth­er air­space users, as part of the regulator’s wider Air­space Mod­erni­sa­tion Strat­e­gy. 

Sophie O’Sullivan

A new pol­i­cy con­cept will also be con­sid­ered which focus­es on a spe­cif­ic type of air­space struc­ture called a tem­po­rary reserved area (TRA) to enable the tri­alling of sys­tems and approach­es that safe­ly allow drones to oper­ate with­in the same air­space as oth­er air­craft.

Pri­or to this, drone oper­a­tors wish­ing to fly BVLOS, usu­al­ly have to apply for a tem­po­rary dan­ger area (TDA), which effec­tive­ly clos­es a sec­tion of air­space for oth­er users for up to 90 days in dura­tion.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.caa.co.uk/

(Top image: Cred­it — Alti­tude Angel)