Dro­lo Project for Drone Use in Low­er Air­space

Unmanned avi­a­tion is now real­ly tak­ing off. The elec­tric-pow­ered and local­ly emis­sion-free fly­ing devices known as drones are com­ing under the mag­ni­fy­ing glass of both com­pa­nies and researchers.

In order to ensure effi­cient, safe and pro­fes­sion­al oper­a­tions, sev­er­al major chal­lenges need to be addressed. These include, for exam­ple, air nav­i­ga­tion ser­vices for low-lev­el air­space, con­trol of flights when out of visu­al line of sight, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of per­form­ing sev­er­al tasks with a sin­gle flight. These and many oth­er chal­lenges are being tack­led by the Dro­lo project, which promis­es to be an under­tak­ing of inter­na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance.

The Dro­lo project will exam­ine, devel­op and pilot solu­tions for traf­fic man­age­ment in low­er air­space, 5G con­nec­tions and the util­i­sa­tion of print­ed and embed­ded elec­tron­ics. The project will test out smart drone ser­vices for use in ports, the use of drones in the vicin­i­ty of an air­port, a drone weath­er ser­vice and the suit­abil­i­ty of hydro­gen as an ener­gy source for drones. The project will also devel­op busi­ness mod­els for Finnish drone oper­a­tors from an export per­spec­tive. For exam­ple, per­form­ing sev­er­al jobs or mul­ti­ple cus­tomers dur­ing the same flight improves the cost-effec­tive­ness of drones. The project will involve set­ting up Fin­land’s first drone air traf­fic con­trol test area in the Oulu region.  The pro­jec­t’s part­ners include a num­ber of key drone-relat­ed Finnish com­mer­cial and research actors. The project will cre­ate an ecosys­tem that will gen­er­ate inno­va­tions and new drone-relat­ed busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties.

Read the full arti­cle here: https://ftnnews.com/aviation/41824-drolo-project-for-drone-use-in-lower-airspace