Development of the use of unmanned air vehicles (UAV) in urban areas requires measures to be implemented in order to ensure their safe coexistence with all airspace users.
Development of the use of unmanned air vehicles (UAV) in urban areas requires measures to be implemented in order to ensure their safe coexistence with all airspace users without any limitations or restrictions. This is the mission of the TindAIR initiative: it will result in a series of large-scale demonstrations on urban air mobility (UAM), with a focus on conflict management between different types of flying platforms.
New generation aircraft feature alternative propulsion systems and new vehicle designs, with increasingly automated and remotely piloted functions, such as flying taxis and drones. These meet the demand for alternative means of transport in large cities while reducing noise pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
The SESAR programme wished to integrate the European concept of “U-space” (a set of decentralised services aimed at integrating UAVs into the airspace and allowing them to cohabit with manned aircraft) into its research and innovation activities in order to develop new operational concepts, based on existing and new technologies, for the safe integration of UAVs and drones.
The consortium will organise a series of demonstrations covering representative and operational use cases featuring a combination of manned and unmanned aircraft. The operational scenarios will address existing urban needs, such as emergency medical, passenger and cargo transport. Extreme cases such as sector saturation and emergency landings will be taken into consideration. The tests will use aircraft of different types, capabilities and levels of automation, all sharing the same airspace.
TindAIR demonstrations
Scheduled for 2022, the TindAIR demonstrations will take place in the peri-urban / urban areas of French cities, such as Toulouse and Bordeaux. They will focus on strategic and tactical assistance for conflict detection and resolution. The objective will be to validate the concepts of operation and the target architecture for conflict detection and resolution for all airspace users. The solution will provide validated U-space services to future users of these urban air mobility modes (UAM).
This project is also an opportunity to demonstrate the operations of a tactical conflict resolution service module that incorporates an artificial intelligence algorithm, which can be integrated into future U-space deployments. The TindAIR consortium is hoping for successful cooperation with a perfect representation of innovative SMEs, research laboratories, air taxi designers and industrial suppliers coordinated by Innov’ATM, a French company and reputed specialist in artificial intelligence for unmanned air traffic management systems (UTM) and for C-UAS systems.
Further information
TindAIR is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 101017677), under the call for projects: SESAR-VLD2-03-2020 “U-space capabilities and services to enable Urban Air Mobility”.
The initiative is coordinated by Innov'ATM and Sophie Althabegoit and brings together a group of companies and research laboratories from France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.
