INTEGRATING UNCREWED AIRCRAFT SAFELY AND EFFECTIVELY
Uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) are here to stay, with their usage set to increase rapidly over the next few years. Frequentis was early to recognise and respond to the challenges of rising UAV traffic, and continues to develop innovative solutions for all its safety-critical markets..
UNCREWED TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT (UTM)
Frequentis pioneered a vision of a harmonised framework for ATM and uncrewed traffic management (UTM). Recognising our unique position as an active member of industry standard organisations and working groups, we took the initiative in bridging the gap between well-established ATM and emerging UTM technologies and processes.
By combining our innovative vision with a close collaboration with industry standard organisations, we developed an UTM system covering the services stipulated in the EASA U – Space regulation.
A successful drone operation comprises systems for voice and data communications, drone detection, and uncrewed traffic management. Frequentis continues to guide organisations in extending their technological capabilities to ensure they can integrate drones safely and efficiently.
Use cases abound across industries: from using drones to inspect equipment in hazardous environments to delivering goods. For public safety organisations, drones could enable rapid disaster reporting and response.
Before deploying an operational system, customers across all industries are invited to test and validate for a variety of use cases using a pre-operational system.
For more information about UTM, please visit our ATM/UTM section.
For more insight into the RISE project, which helps to unlock the future of drone operations, watch the video below:
Automated drone dispatching
Legal regulations in Europe regarding the use of drones have changed significantly in recent years, enabling viable use cases for the automated dispatching of drones to support real-life operations at scale. Drawing on our deep experience in Air Traffic Management (ATM), Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM), control centre operations, data fusion and communications in safety-critical markets, Frequentis is seeking partners to join in pioneering automated drone dispatching in real environments. Frequentis has developed and proven all the required technology, and now that both the legal conditions and the experience of authorities are sufficiently developed, we believe that organisations in public safety, maritime, railways, emergency services, border security and defence can take the first steps in unlocking the considerable benefits of automated drone dispatching. We invite you to join us as a validation partner.
New opportunities for drone operations
With the ability to provide data from the skies, and to carry and deliver a variety of payloads, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), commonly known as drones, can make existing processes more efficient as well as unlock completely new opportunities across multiple industries, authorities and use cases. To date, the main obstacles to developing drone operations at scale have been regulatory and organisational issues: the need to ensure safety both in the air and on the ground drove the rapid (and ongoing) evolution of European and national legislation. And based on the initial response to that legislation, organisations so far have operated drones mostly in visual line-of-sight (VLOS) of their pilots. With VLOS operations, the 1:1 ratio of pilots to drones naturally creates significant resource constraints, making it difficult to develop large-scale use cases for drones. This approach also slows down responses to emergency situations and other time-critical operations, and significantly raises the cost of routine operations such as regular flights to check the maintenance status of physical assets.
Although beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) technology addresses the main challenges here, it has not yet led to the scalable and cost-effective automation of drone operations. Frequentis believes that this is about to change: today, the technology, the regulatory frameworks and the operational experience among both authorities and drone operators have evolved to the point where we are confident that automated “drone-in-a-box” operations at scale will soon be a reality. In short: we believe that in our safety-critical markets for a considerable number of use cases there is no longer any need for on-site VLOS drone pilots. Our proposed solution combines a deep understanding of the legislation with all the required technology components – so that forward-thinking organisations can work with us to pioneer large-scale, highly automated drone operations.
Decoupling pilots from the location of their drones paves the way for the centralisation of drone operations to control centres, and creates exciting opportunities for automation. Across multiple industries, automated drone dispatching — under the guidance of qualified operators and with the ability to assume manual control if needed — offers extensive opportunities to increase situational awareness, improve mission management, boost efficiency, reduce costs, cut response times, improve safety.
Frequentis can help to
- Design and analyse drone-in-a-box use cases, ensuring that they are legally feasible and realistic
- Design and check flight routes
- Design and implement automated procedures to safely manage drone failures
- Cut through the red tape to get the required regulatory approval, from both technical and operational perspectives
- Design and implement mission-critical communications over wide areas, including integration with public networks
- Design and implement sophisticated integration of data from multiple sources
- Design and implement the operational workflows
- Plan and execute the required organisational change management
- Deploy the automated drone hangars and drones, including all sensors and telemetry
- Deploy and customise the solution server
- Deploy and integrate the control room solution
- Maintain regulatory compliance during the full lifecycle of the solution
Continue with Air Traffic Management ATM/UTM integration
Continue with Innovation Overview
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