Project description
Advanced communication system could extend flight range of drones
The use of drone technology in commercial applications such as crop fertilisation, mining and journalism is witnessing a rise. Studies forecast that unit shipments will increase from 250 000 in 2017 to 1.5 million in 2022. Current regulations restrict drone flight to visual line of sight (VLOS). Flights performed out of visual range are only allowed for lightweight drones. In an effort to extend drone operation beyond VLOS, the EU-funded TRANSDAT project is working on a communication system that can register and keep track of drone pilots. The technology is designed to provide location anywhere in the world, secure connection and air safety services with the highest-quality standards, free from faults and interferences.
Objective
Drone technology is moving extremely fast, providing different kind of services to many industries; as a result the numbers of drones for most commercial applications like agriculture spraying and seeding, mining, delivery or media was near 250,000 in 2017 and it is estimated to reach 1.5 Mill units by 2022. Nowadays, most of drone applications require flying BVLOS but current regulations limit the use of drones to VLOS (visual line of sight) or BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) only for light drones. The state authorities, are willing to permit flights BVLOS if the pilot can prove safe operation, taking into account that 64% of the incidents between 2006 and 2016 were due to communication problems, our objective has been the creation of a satellite based communication device specially designed to improve these problems in communication links.
TRANSDAT is communication system for all kind of drones flying over the aerial space. It is an innovative solution able to register and keep track on drone pilots, designed to provide location anywhere in the world, secure connection and air safety services with the highest quality standards, free from faults and interferences. It provides information to know where the drones are through a base station, tablet or even a mobile phone. This modem-type system is able to communicate position and orders, with the transmission of GPS positions to the base station while receiving commands to control both: the device and its payload. TRANSDAT was built to enable every single drone of performing a BVLOS flight that till now were limited to small ranges; it was born as a tool to improve the UAV communication and therefore security for all of us.
We have performed a preliminary conservative financial forecast considering as potential addressable market just the 600,000 new units/year of drones related to the commercial applications of the market analysis. These projections provide a ROI of 469% after 3 years of commercialization.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringsatellite technology
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringroboticsautonomous robotsdrones
- social sciencessocial geographytransporttransport planningair traffic management
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
28919 LEGANES MADRID
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.