The international aviation technology company AERTECthe Advanced Centre for Aerospace Technologies, CATEC, Pildo Labs and University of Seville have been successfully completed in Seville, in the context of the project U-ELCOMEa series of tests in a real environment aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of transporting goods, in this case medical cargo, over long distances using drones and UAS.
The U-ELCOME project is coordinated by Eurocontrol, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air NavigationThe aim of the project is to demonstrate the safe and reliable integration of commercial drone activities in airspace.
The tests were carried out in Seville, one of the 15 locations in Spain, France and Italy where the trials will be conducted, which will help accelerate the uptake of U-space services in Europe.
Seville and Jaén are two of the 15 locations, spread across Spain, France and Italy, where these trials will be carried out, which will help accelerate the uptake of U-Space services in Europe.
U-space is a set of digital and automated services designed to allow access safe and efficient operation of a large number of unmanned aircraft in the same airspace. U-space is an enabling framework for the development of UAS operations, their integration and coexistence with manned aviation (air traffic management services, ATM, and air navigation services, ANS).
The tests carried out in Seville consisted of a test on how UAS in U-space airspace can optimise medical cargo deliveries in urban, intercity and rural environments by improving the efficiency, safety and sustainability of operations. The key, on this occasion, has been the combination of digital and physical infrastructure capabilities. The feasibility of the concept has been demonstrated and flights in real-life scenarios will be carried out shortly.
The benefits of U-space are focused on organising, making more flexible, controlling and making safer and more efficient all types of drone operations in urban environments or where there is a high concentration of simultaneous drone activities, as well as generating new business and employment opportunities.
The test involved the collection in a hospital area of several medical loads (medicines, defibrillator, surgical equipment...) with a drone from the University of Seville, which took them to a nearby runway where a UAS TARSIS was waiting, which was responsible for quickly transporting the medical load up to several tens of kilometres, where, on landing, the load was transferred to another small drone, responsible for carrying it to its destination point, in an area that is difficult to access. The flights were BVLOS (beyond the pilot's line of sight) and were performed automatically.
These trials have demonstrated the feasibility of conducting UAS operations supported by U-space U1 and U2 services. This means that both the basic U-space services (U1), which include e-registration, e-identification and geo-awareness, and also the initial services (U2), which include flight planning, approval, tracking, dynamic airspace information and information exchange with air traffic management (ATM) systems, have been validated.
This project has received funding from the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) under grant agreement No. 101079171.
