R&D Project 1: ALIAS
Project Agile Integrated Airspace System (ALIAS) will see drones being used to test state of the art technology aimed at making the skies safer for all aviation, and ultimately enabling autonomous unmanned aircraft providing better supply-chain and connectivity to the UK and Europe.
The consortium will integrate cutting-edge technology including flight autonomy software, Unmanned Traffic Management (dronecloud UTM), Traffic Information Service (TIS) and secure comms, into a cohesive, agile and safe airspace system. The consortium includes Ports of Jersey, as the operator of the Island’s airport and harbours, and is working closely with Digital Jersey to access local knowledge and connections to on-island stakeholders.
In April and June 2024, the dronecloud team set up camp on Jersey for four weeks of drone flight trials for project to put our systems into action, following nearly two years of development.
The objective was to demonstrate consortium technology and systems integrated for multi-operator BVLOS drone operations within a live shared airspace ATC environment.
By bringing together Uncrewed Traffic Management (UTM) and Air Traffic Management (ATM) Project ALIAS delivers a template for Integrated Traffic Management (ITM), which paves the way for scalable Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) and Autonomous drone operations.
dronecloud UTM
UTM is a crucial and central role in an advanced drone operation, as demonstrated in project ALIAS. One of the primary roles is to manage drone to drone deconfliction through strategic (pre flight) and tactical (in flight) processes. The UTM can do manage conflict in its own environment but must also have the ability to share flight data with others through open standards and interoperability of the architecture, creating a wholistic view of the airspace.
During ALIAS, dronecloud deployed and tested two key UTM functions:
- Operational Intent Volume (OIV) & Conformance Monitoring
By integrating drone telemetry, a fused Traffic information Service (TIS) and Volant’s Via software, dronecloud UTM was able to create dynamic volumes of airspace to safely deconflict operations and track Conformance in real-time in airspace shared with crewed aviation. - UTM – ATC communications
The dronecloud UTM team operated within Jersey Air Traffic Control (ATC) providing direct access to drone operations (situational awareness) and ensuring safe communications of operational procedures.
In the trials of Air Traffic Control integration, the ALIAS consortium successfully conducted UAV flights into and out of Jersey Airport which manages over 30,000 aircraft movements and 1.5 million passengers per year.
Passing at a distance of 1 kilometre, the UAVs travelled in opposite directions between Jersey Airport and Sorel Point, Jersey, the latter being our eVTOL port for the five weeks of the ALIAS flight trial campaign.
dronecloud will continue to develop and test our UTM services and bring them into our platform environment for our customers to use.