Project description
Testing the course for drones
The sky’s the limit for drones, but Europe is setting the framework for the safe operations of these unmanned aircraft in order to reduce risks and increase safety. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency published guidance to help aviation operators and national authorities manage drone incidents near airports. In this context, the EU-funded FlightAI project will explore the AI technology generated by the FET Open GOAL-Robots project, allowing for solutions in highly non-linear search spaces. The aim is to formulate flight plans based on an interactive interface. By testing the acceptability and usability of the proposed technology, FlightAI will test the integrated system through the wide stakeholder network of the consortium.
Objective
Drones in Europe are a rapidly developing sector with enterprises increasingly using drones for their business and the EU Legislator giving EASA rulemaking responsibility for civil drones of any mass. The common rules have been developed and will be enforced from January 2021. The performance of flight operations requires the compilation of a safety risk assessment document, in particular, the SORA (Specific Operations Risk Assessment) established for drone operations and endorsed by EASA. Compiling this assessment is expertise intensive and time-consuming. Currently, EUSC supports this operation with a web service called SAMWISE that, however, still requires the manual gathering of a large amount of information and the satisfaction of several constraints. The project aims to integrate into the web-solution built by EUSC the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology generated by the FET-OPEN GOAL-Robots project, allowing the search of solutions in highly-nonlinear search spaces. The new technology from GOAL-Robots will support the semi-autonomous search of a solution to formulate flight plans based on an interactive interface, that meets the user’s requirements (flight start/arrival points, drone available, pilot licences, etc.), the SORA requirements, and the GIS characteristics of the involved overflown territory/airspace. The project will accomplish a systematic validation of the integrated system by testing the acceptability and usability of the proposed technology by selected stakeholders through the wide stakeholder network of the consortium. Moreover, business case refinement and focused dissemination activities will pave the way to the commercialisation of the produced service within the European drone market.
Fields of science
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligence
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesphysical geographycartographygeographic information systems
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringroboticsautonomous robotsdrones
- social sciencessocial geographytransporttransport planningair traffic management
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CSA - Coordination and support actionCoordinator
00185 Roma
Italy