A series of drone demonstrations will soon get underway at urban and rural locations across Europe, thanks to funding from the SESAR Joint Undertaking within the framework the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility programme.
With a co-financing of EUR 9.5 million, the demos aim to illustrate that Europe is on course with its implementation of U-space, an initiative that aims to ensure safe and secure drone traffic management.
Vodafone and Proximus are among the stakeholders participating in the demonstrations, which also include start-ups, SMEs, research institutes, universities, drone operators as well as service providers, airports, local/city authorities, law enforcement agencies and civil aviation authorities. Over the course of 18 months, this enlarged SESAR family of stakeholders will carry out demonstrations in several cities and rural locations in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.
Together they will aim to show the readiness of U-space services to manage a broad range of drone operations and related services, and their interaction with manned aviation. These range from parcel deliveries between two dense urban locations, medical emergencies and police interventions, to maritime search and rescue and forestry inspections. The leisure user is also catered for, with projects demonstrating how private drone operators too can benefit from U-space services. The operations will also aim to demonstrate different levels of automation that are possible, as well as seamless information exchange between multiple drone operators and service providers.
U-space is an enabling framework designed to facilitate any kind of routine mission, in all classes of airspace and all types of environment – even the most congested – while addressing an appropriate interface with manned aviation and air traffic control. When fully deployed, a wide range of drone missions that are currently being restricted will be possible thanks to a sustainable and robust European ecosystem that is globally interoperable. The timing for U-space is critical given the speed at which the market is growing. The aim is to have foundation U-space services in place by 2019.