Integrating drones into the Air Traffic Management process
Over the past year and a half, ACR has taken significant steps towards integrating unmanned aircraft systems (“drones”) into the Air Traffic Management process, partnering with a Swedish R&D tech company Naviation AB.
While country-wide unmanned traffic management - UTM - is still a few years away from operational maturity, ACR is already today enabling drone operations in some cities as well as delivery drones beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) by using “Dronerequest”.
Dronerequest is a pre-UTM solution facilitating the interaction between drone operators and air traffic control towers in controlled airspace, where prior authorization is required. Outside controlled airspace, Dronerequest executes another key safety function: the notification about ongoing drone operations to manned aviation, especially blue- light operations.
This is done through data exchange enabled through a partnership between Naviation AB and SafeSky (safesky.app) whereby General Aviation is made aware of all drone operations, with options to integrate these alerts/information into any of the common VFR navigation apps.
Furthermore, the partnership with SafeSky brings additional benefits to Dronerequest, whereby drone operators are offered a real-time view of low level air traffic in their vicinity. This enables and alerts drone operators and allows them to take precautionary measures long before General Aviation comes within visual or hearing range.
Through a specific data exchange with an operationally certified onboard-system (built by Norwegian Air Ambulance Technology, norskluftambulanse.no/eng/), all ambulance-, police- and rescue helicopters in Scandinavia can see and avoid areas of drone operations around airports operated by ACR, and – by drone operators’ voluntary use of Dronerequest – in any other location as well!
Through Dronerequest, ACR provides an interim-solution for drone- to-drone deconfliction and increases the safety of its operated airspaces, as a national UTM system is not yet in operation in Sweden or elsewhere in Europe.
For further information, please contact
Mattias Welander
mattias.welander@acr-sweden.se
+46 (0) 768-164888