Eurocontrol will lead the consortium behind the SESAR 2020 PODIUM project, which has been selected by the European Commission to demonstrate unmanned aircraft system traffic management (UTM) services, procedures and technologies.
The SESAR Horizon 2020 PODIUM project will demonstrate UTM services, procedures and technologies at four operational sites in Denmark, France and the Netherlands throughout 2018 and 2019. It supports U-space, the European Commission’s vision for the safe, secure and efficient handling of drone traffic and a key enabler for the growing drone market to generate economic and societal benefits.
The Proving Operations of Drones with Initial UTM (PODIUM) project has been selected by the European Commission to proceed to the grant preparation phase. The work will be performed by a consortium led by Eurocontrol and comprising Airbus, DSNA, DELAIR, Drones Paris Region, Integra Aerial Services, Naviair, NLR, Orange and Unifly. Around 20 drone operators – including many small and medium enterprises – will participate as third parties to the consortium.
Eurocontrol will coordinate the consortium, and lead the work packages on coordination and management, concept and architecture, and demonstration assessment and recommendations. This will ensure the alignment with wider ATM and RPAS strategies. PODIUM will work closely with the Eurocontrol-led CORUS exploratory research project, which is preparing a concept for UTM.
PODIUM will perform four complementary large-scale demonstrations – with over 185 drone flights – at Odense in Denmark, Bretigny and Toulouse in France, and Eelde in the Netherlands. UTM solutions will be demonstrated for visual line of sight (VLOS) and beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone flights. The scope covers very low level operations in rural and urban areas, in the vicinity of airports, in uncontrolled and controlled airspace, and in mixed environments with manned aviation.
The project will highlight the important role of UTM in providing a mutual traffic situational awareness for the involved local actors – including air traffic management (ATM) – as a means to facilitate their day to day drone management. PODIUM will contribute to de-risking the operational and industrial deployment of UTM by demonstrating a comprehensive web based UTM system, using tracking systems based on Mode-S, L-Band and GSM networks.
Drafted by the SESAR Joint Undertaking, the U-space blueprint foresees a progressive deployment of U-space linked to four blocks of services and technologies: foundation services (U1), initial services (U2), advanced services (U3) and full services (U4). The PODIUM project will demonstrate the service levels U1, U2 and some limited U3 services, with the aim to validate its UTM solution to technology readiness level (TRL) 7 (corresponding to system prototype demonstration in operational environment).
PODIUM is expected to be formally kicked-off in January 2018, starting with a survey of UTM users to collect their needs and priorities. An advisory board with a broad range of stakeholders is being set up to guide the consortium. Preparatory work and flight trials will be performed throughout 2018 and 2019, leading to the issue of a final report with conclusions and recommendations on deployment in late 2019.
