Activities on drone integration and demonstration in VLL operations

Project Information

SAFEDRONE

Grant agreement ID: 783211

DOI

10.3030/783211

Project closed

EC signature date 29 May 2018

Start date 1 June 2018

End date 31 May 2020

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 1 455 768,75

EU contribution

€ 1 169 074,13

Coordinated by

INDRA SISTEMAS SA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SAFEDRONE (Activities on drone integration and demonstration in VLL operations)

Reporting period: 2019-06-01 to 2020-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The scope of the SAFEDRONE project is to acquire practical experience in Very Low Level (VLL) operations where general aviation and drones will share the airspace. Specifically this proposal is targeted to Topic SESAR-VLD1-10-2016: Safe integration of drones, which purpose is to perform demonstration activities for identifying quick-win solutions that will enable a safe integration of drones. Moreover, it is important to highlight that this project has a clear practical focus which primary activities will be innovation, integration, and especially, demonstrating activities with flight tests.

The project has fulfilled all its objectives. During this second year, the demonstrations activities have been composed of four campaigns of flights, in addition to the 5 or 6 flying-setup weeks that were necessary for making all the systems work properly (drones, equipment, etc.). These campaigns have been carried on different seasons, so flights and results have been obtained under different weather conditions (temperature, wind and visibility conditions, etc.). Taking into account more than twenty flights were carried out per campaign, we can affirm than in the SAFEDRONE project we have performed more than 100 flights, which is a relevant data. During the final demonstration week, up to 7 drones and a manned aircraft flew simultaneously. Details of the conclusions for each of the flight camapaigns can be found in the technical report.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the duration of the project, SAFEDRONE has performed the following main activities:

1. Design of the demonstration activities in detail that was the basis of the Demonstration Plan deliverable which has been one of the major deliverables of this first year. SAFEDRONE has organized the demonstrations in four trials,

2. A complete architecture of the system for SAFEDRONE project has been designed in order to implement the necessary U-space services and interfaces to perform the described Trials.

3. With respect to the integration of the general aviation aircraft and U-space, it is important to highlight that a new concept has been defined, called “cooperative but passive”.

4. Also, an operational risk analysis, as part of the safety studies needed to obtain the permit to flight in Spain, was performed in order to ensure that all the planned demonstrations can be performed in a safe way.

5. Unifly’s U-space systems has been adapted in order to fulfill SAFEDRONE requirements.

6. The GCS software of the drones has been modified in order to be able to communicate with U-space system from UNIFLY.

7. A number of adaptations on the general aviation aircraft has been performed which includes:
• Integration of an ADS-B out transponder.
• Development of a specific interface related to U-space services for the pilot.

8. With respect to the autonomous aerial vehicles, a set of advanced functionalities have been developed and tested based on a simulation framework. A detect and avoid method based on point clouds from different types of sensors (3D Lidar, stereo camera, time-of-flight camera,etc.) and the Lazy Theta* algorithm for path planning has been developed and tested.

9. A software architecture to handle swarming operations, such as coordinated monitoring missions, has been implemented, tested and integrated with the Unifly´s U-space system.

10. A number of drones or UAS has been adapted to the project requirements, including the configuration of the autopilot to be used by the project GCS.

11. It has been managed the flight authorizations to perform the flight experiments. Once the Demonstration Plan was approved by SESAR JU, it was decided (as a risk mitigation action for the project) to obtain the flight permits in order to be sure that the defined trials can be conducted in ATLAS Test Center.

12. A set of activities has been performed related to the design in detail of each of the flight experiments, and also, establish the methodology to verify the performance of the U-space system during the demonstration activities.

13. More than 100 flight experiments have been performed, obtaining a large number of interesting results that are detailed in the Demostration report deliverable.

14. Organization of a Demo Day with more than 70 attendants.

15. Creation of a project web-page and press-releases, and also, disseminate the project results in 9 different events.

16. Design of a pre-risk assessment applying SORA to the CONOPs of SAFEDRONE operations.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

SAFEDRONE has demonstrated key U-space technologies and services, specially related to the interactions between general aviation and drones sharing the same airspace, and also will demonstrate how highly autonomous vehicles with Detect&Avoid functionalities and swarming capabilities can be integrated within U-space services.

On the other hand, Europe is entering into a new era where a common regulation framework, already published, will be applicable to all Member States. Therefore, this is a crucial moment and there is a need to support as much as possible the Aviation Authorities and the standardization bodies. That is why it is proposed that SAFEDRONE's support to the CAAs and the standardization bodies is centred in the development of Pre-Risk Assessments (previously known as Standard Scenarios) that consider U-space as a mitigation strategy.
Specifically, SAFEDRONE has elaborated a Standard Scenario (or Pre-Risk Assessment as it is now defined by EASA) related to BVLOS flight at VLL with a drone of less than 3 meter wingspan and 25Kg MTOW in rural areas, in uncontrolled airspace and making use of U-space services (U1 and U2 services).
The development of this Pre-Risk Assessment has the following objectives:
• Improve the understanding of the relation between SORA safety assessment and U-space.
• Promote the regulation of truly BVLOS flights (without observers) in VLL.
• Support the work of CAAs (especially EASA) in the development of new Pre-Risk Assessments.
• Identify systems and technologies to be standardized to facilitate their use by the drone industry.

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