“Drone Days is a European Commission initiative that aims to make drones a vector for the smart and sustainable mobility of the future.”
UMILES Next’s air taxi, Concept Integrity, equipped with the FlyFree technology developed by TECNALIA, has been presented in Brussels.
Drone Days, organised in the framework of Drone Strategy 2.0, is a European Commission initiative aimed at making drones a vector for the smart and sustainable mobility of the future. They contribute to the development, through digitalisation and automation of a new range of sustainable services and transport.
European industry and policy experts have explored the main strategic areas related to the future of innovative urban aerial mobility and emergency services, as well as strengthening synergies between European civil and defence drone capabilities.
Drone 2.0 European Strategy
UMILES Next and TECNALIA have presented the technologies validated during these tests through flights carried out in Esperce (Toulouse), Atlas (Jaén), and CIAR (Lugo); they will represent the future of safe and sustainable urban aerial mobility within the framework of the European Drone 2.0 strategy:
- Automatic flight altitude control
- Automatic take-off and landing
- Urban Airspace Integration Tests (U-Space)
- In-flight tactical aircraft conflict resolution scenario
- Dynamicgeofencing: Non-intrusive monitoring of flight areas
- Detection and avoidance with other drones in flight
- Dynamic re-routing: Modification of flight plans resulting from the resolution of conflict tactics
- Cruise manoeuvres
- Coordination of flights with other drones and manned vehicles through the U-space AIRUS platform
- Integration tests including aircraft simulation, drone identification and registration, geopositioning, flight mission plan conflict resolution, flight tracking and monitoring, ATC (Air Traffic Controller) interface or emergency management.
These validations have been a major step towards the integration of this type of aircraftinto the airspace for the validation of the urban air traffic management of the future with unmanned aircraft (U-space).
Future Mobility
The mobility of the future aims to be increasingly smart and sustainable. New systems and developments will mean that alternative transport solutions will be available in increasingly crowded cities. UMILES Next and TECNALIA have their sights set on this and are working together on air and ground-based urban mobility solutions, which are expected to become a real alternative by around 2028.
