A world where an urgent blood test would take off in a drone from a remote countryside to an analysis laboratory where we would land in town in an autonomous flying taxi. No need to go to the movies or read science fiction novels, we’re almost there. Policemen, firefighters, real estate agents, surveyors but also bailiffs or notaries, more and more professions, sometimes improbable, call on remote pilots and their machines to better fly over their subjects.
“Things are accelerating, says Stéphane Bascobert, the boss of Innov’ATM, a Toulouse-based company that has developed software to facilitate the integration of drones into the airspace. Its platform DroneKeeper.com has 8,000 subscribers who can file their flight plans there, obtain overflight authorizations from the right people in a regulatory landscape that still resembles a jungle, and consult in real time the “risks of conflict” with other devices. “But the locks jump one after the other”, adds the specialist, and the planets align.
Firstly, because the new European regulations, baptized U space, aiming to facilitate but also to secure the circulation of “unmanned aircraft” entered into force on January 26th. It will impose itself on the Member States and gradually create navigation corridors.
Real-time instructions to remote pilots
Then because the TindAIR* project has just delivered its results after two years of research. This European consortium, coordinated from Toulouse by Innov’ATM, brought together researchers and innovative companies in the mobility sector. He had to take up the challenge of demonstrating that the rise of drones could be done in complete safety and of finding a concrete way of “ensuring cohabitation” between unmanned flying vehicles and other airspace users. Microlights and gliders, for example, but also, of course, commercial aircraft that fly at low altitude around airports. TindAIR simply had to avoid encounters. It led to the design of software to anticipate “conflicts” before the flight of drones but also to communicate in real time with remote pilots. “We conducted two test campaigns, in the suburbs of Toulouse and in that of Bordeaux, in April and September. We succeeded in giving real-time instructions to the remote pilots, asking them to turn, to the right or to the left, to modify their trajectory and downright to land immediately”, assures Stéphane Bascobert.
For emergencies, not to deliver coffee
Another part of TindAIR made Italian academics work on the “societal” obstacles to the development of commercial drones. If they haven’t quite finished their work. Their first conclusions show that the population, even if the fear of security has been lifted, is not ready to accept the emergence of drones in everyday life at all costs. “Concerns remain about respect for privacy but also about noise,” summarizes Stéphane Bascobert. If the drones are welcomed with open arms to “manage medical emergencies”, they could very quickly annoy if it was a question of delivering a pizza or a coffee.
* Tactical Instrumental Deconfliction And In-flight Resolution