This project consists of a consortium of organisations with expertise in engineering, aviation, and business to provide a clear path for development, test and ultimately exploitation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The key areas expertise includes heavy lift UAV platforms, radar and radar identification technology, BVLOS communication, UTM data systems and integration, regulatory approval, and public exploitation.

This project is particularly innovative as it incorporates technology that has not yet been used on a wide-scale and aims to influence the UK CAA standards and pave the way for commercialisation of drone systems placing it at the heart of the expanding Future of Flight marketplace.

This project addresses the challenge of how truly resilient and cost-effective localised communication, navigation and surveillance is possible in high risk very low-level flight (VLLF) environments and how this localised information can augment existing air traffic management (ATM) and unmanned traffic management (UTM) technologies to provide enhanced situational awareness.

The potential value of the use of UAVs to provide such services has been demonstrated in controlled environments, however to realise the full societal impact of such concepts requires additional safety systems to be deployed and operated, such that the services may be available everywhere and to everyone in need.

The systems developed in this project will demonstrate resilient, accurate and safe operations of a UAV capable of delivery of medical equipment into complex high-risk environments. Trials of this system will help to establish wider commercial business applications for UAVs through demonstrating the significant benefits of localised situational awareness in critical scenarios such as take-off, landing and navigating in complex urban environments. Trials will also provide a platform to deliver and test operational requirements to identify the infrastructure and operational process requirements to provide an integrated ATM/UTM environment for future UAV operations and inform UK CAA of the standards that should be pursued and implemented to enable national exploitation of the technology.

The recent pandemic and similar crises have highlighted the need for better logistical support for rural communities, especially for the elderly and those requiring extra care, for instance to ensure rapid NHS testing of patient samples, and also for rapid delivery of critically urgent supplies. There is a requirement within the NHS to move test samples reliably between the location where they are taken and the laboratory. At present this is done by road, which has a heavy reliance on human time, environmental consequences due to carbon emissions and can be easily disrupted by external factors such as traffic, restrictions in movement or lack of infrastructure to obtain access to isolated locations. If a managed UAV flight capability were established this delivery time could be cut significantly. This could also apply to delivery of blood from central blood banks and even donor organs.

Establishing managed control of UAVs will also permit the adoption of the technology by the emergency services. In the event of a major incident in an urban area, road traffic can rapidly gridlock delaying the arrival of ambulances. Although motorcycle paramedics are now very common, they are a compromise between speed and equipment carried. Using a load carrying UAV allows additional medical supplies to be quickly delivered to a scene to allow motorcycle paramedics to treat a greater number of patients without expending their available supplies. An example is that additional solid-state oxygen generators could also be delivered.

In later stages of the Future of Flight Challenge, we plan to transition to BVLOS trials demonstrating a routine operational drone services in a safely coordinated environment on a regional basis in support of fully identified end use cases with validated robust business cases.