Skyports joins UK CAA Sandbox to trial BVLOS flights in non-segregated airspace

Drone deliv­ery ser­vice provider Sky­ports has been accept­ed into the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Authority’s (CAA) Reg­u­la­to­ry Sand­box to tri­al beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) flights in non-seg­re­gat­ed air­space.

The Reg­u­la­to­ry Sand­box is a pro­gramme estab­lished by the UK CAA to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment where inno­va­tion in avi­a­tion can be explored in line with UK CAA core prin­ci­ples of safe­ty, secu­ri­ty and con­sumer pro­tec­tion.

Sky­ports joins oth­er avi­a­tion inno­va­tors in the Sand­box such as Ama­zon, Volo­copter, Alti­tude Angel, NATS and sees.ai.

Dun­can Walk­er, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at Sky­ports, said: “Using drone deliv­er­ies with­in sup­ply chains can cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant time and cost sav­ings.  The cur­rent COVID-19 cri­sis has high­light­ed the role that unmanned air­craft appli­ca­tions can play in keep­ing the flow of goods mov­ing, espe­cial­ly med­ical prod­ucts, lim­it­ing human con­tact and sup­ply­ing hard-to-reach com­mu­ni­ties.

“A crit­i­cal step in enabling per­ma­nent deliv­ery drone oper­a­tions is being able to oper­ate out of sight of the remote pilot in air­space used by oth­ers. Through this game-chang­ing part­ner­ship with the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, we will be tri­alling the inte­gra­tion of our tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-advanced unmanned air­craft in this shared air­space to demon­strate that our deliv­ery drones can be oper­at­ed safe­ly along­side oth­er air­craft.”

Sky­ports and the UK CAA will explore how reg­u­la­to­ry approvals can be grant­ed for drones con­trolled out-of-sight of the remote pilot to be flown safe­ly with­in air­space that is shared with oth­er air­craft, which is vital if per­ma­nent drone deliv­er­ies are to become a real­i­ty.

Dur­ing the tri­al, Sky­ports will work with lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy part­ners Iris Automa­tion and Thales, and envi­ron­men­tal part­ners RSK.

Inte­grat­ing Iris Automation’s com­put­er-vision-based Detect-and-Avoid (DAA) tech­nol­o­gy, called Casia, onto unmanned air­craft will enable Sky­ports’ drones to auto­mat­i­cal­ly under­stand the sur­round­ing skies and inde­pen­dent­ly react as if a pilot were on board to avoid mid-air col­li­sions.

Thales will help Sky­ports with mis­sion plan­ning and flight man­age­ment through its inte­grat­ed unmanned air­craft sys­tem (UAS), SOARIZON, as well as pro­vide cut­ting-edge, secure remote elec­tron­ic iden­ti­fi­ca­tion through Thales Remote ID fit­ted to the drone so the air­craft can be tracked.

RSK will assist with apply­ing its skills and exper­tise in envi­ron­men­tal assess­ment, such as noise, air qual­i­ty and car­bon and social impact strate­gies.

Frédéric Laugère, Inno­va­tion Ser­vices Lead at the UK CAA, said: “Reg­u­lar­ly oper­at­ing unmanned vehi­cles beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) of their oper­a­tor is a key require­ment to max­imise the ben­e­fits that they can deliv­er.

“We are delight­ed to start this new col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sky­ports and its part­ners, and work­ing togeth­er to explore require­ments under which reg­u­la­to­ry approval of BVLOS oper­a­tions could be grant­ed. The pub­lic and the indus­try will undoubt­ed­ly ben­e­fit from the find­ings we gen­er­ate and the insights we gain.”