AMU-LED will design and deliver a detailed Concept of Operations (ConOps) and definition of urban air missions followed by simulations and a vast real-flight demonstration campaign to verify and validate the concepts.
The flight demonstrations will accumulate more than 100 hours and flights will be performed across Europe in three different countries and various scenarios:
- United Kingdom (Cranfield) – June 2022
- The Netherlands (Amsterdam / Rotterdam) – August 2022
- Spain (Santiago de Compostela) – September 2022
Cranfield Demonstration
Cranfield University is the first test campaign providing test of all developed technologies at U-Space architectures, ATM/UTM integration and U-Space Services U1-U3 in a fully controlled complete sandbox environment.
This fully AMU-LED consortium-controlled sandbox and airspace allows us to test new concepts, systems and service in a controlled manner within a live operational environment whilst getting direct feedback from all the relevant stakeholders as appropriate, in order to develop and produce an optimum solution that works in practice.
Cranfield global research airport offers industry a unique facility which marries the demands of the commercial airport with an opportunity to innovate all aspects of aviation. Cranfield is the only University in Europe with its own commercial Airport (with approx. 7k movements per year, mainly business jets and general aviation), its own Air Navigation Service Provider and controllers, its own pilots and aircraft. Cranfield airport resides in Class G airspace, and is surrounded by an Aerodrome Traffic Zone (ATZ), 2 NM in radius and 2000 feet in height. The global research airport is within a few kilometers of Milton Keynes smart city.
National Beyond visual line of sight Experimentation Corridor (NBEC) allows testing of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) in a designated 16km experiment corridor connected to the Cranfield Research Airport. NBEC is being further expanded, through a phased approach of trials of incremental complexity in order to gather the evidence to enable routine BVLOS flights of unmanned systems in non-segregated airspace.
It is part of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Sandbox Initiative and informs their guidelines and requirements for BVLOS operations in unsegregated airspace. This existing relationship with CAA is directly leveraged as a part of the AMU-LED proposal in which AMU-LED has become a part of the Innovation Sandbox to provide regulatory oversight and support for this project.
MUEAVI (Multi-User Environment for Autonomous Vehicle Innovation) infrastructure
The Netherlands Demonstration
The second flight campaign will take place in the Netherlands, and will make use of three locations to showcase the safe integration of U-space in different urban environments. The campaign in the Netherlands will demonstrate operational procedures to interface with ATC via U-space, engage and deconflict between two drones (pre-flight and in-flight), and deal with flyability and urban canyon issues.
The cities of Enschede, Rotterdam and Amsterdam will host these demonstrations.
The city of Amsterdam is one of the demonstration sites in the Netherland. Here, the AMU-LED team will demonstrate the feasibility of drone operations in busy urban environments. Locations for the flights will be the Marineterrein, in the heart of the city and next to the Nemo Museum, the NLR headquarters in the south of the city, and the Amsterdam Arena Stadium.
Rotterdam is one of the biggest cities in the Netherlands and a major port hub in Europe. The hotspots for the NL demos will be the port and the airport, and it will showcase complex drone scenarios, demonstrating the U-space capabilities to enable UAM.
Enschede is one of the most active cities in the Netherlands in terms of U-space. Having hosted the SESAR VUTURA demonstrations a couple of years ago, the city continues their work to implement U-space with the AMU-LED demonstrations. The flight campaign in Enschede will take place next to the airport, at the Space53 headquarters.
Santiago de Compostela Demonstration
Spanish demonstration, coordinated by ITG and carried out in Santiago de Compostela, will test CIS and U-space services deployed in the area to coordinate manned and unmanned traffic employing an architecture where tracking service is not provided by USSPs but as a common service.
The demonstration will address the safe UAM flight and navigation, especially in complex urban environments.
The tests will be carried out close to Santiago de Compostela airport (ATZ and CTR) and will involve several stakeholders and close coordination with Spanish and European authorities and will employ different aerial platforms and drone operators to simulate a future real operation.
