TindAIR final workshop took place on December 15th, 2022.
It was the opportunity to present TindAIR project’s results. Here is a long article and quite complete overview of the projectās results in all its different aspects.
Take your time ! š¤ā
Communication and Dissemination
TindAIR has a LinkedIn account with almost 900 subscribers, a Twitter account with 270 followers. Publications were made twice weekly on both social media. The consortium took part in more than 15 congresses and international events where the project was presented and the visitorsā questions answered. This very website has visitors from 64 countries around the world.
Thank youĀ !! šā
Whatās more, one scientific article was written and will be published soon.
U-Space ConOps, use cases and reqirements definitionsā
This Work Package of the project reviewed the U-Space Concept of Operations (ConOps) linked to specific UAM peculiarities.
It also defined the U-Space concepts of Strategic and Tactical conflict resolution for TindAIR.
It established the different scenarios representing the use cases to be demonstrated with the real flights.
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And it defined the set of success criteria following and refining the U-Space requirements from CORUS project to be validated by the demonstrations.
Safety and security assessment
This Work Package assessed the security and safety measures to be taken in the process of the demonstrations.
It set the objectives of the demonstrations in terms of safety and security:
- all aircraft to be displayed on both USSP (supervisor and pilot) screens
- alert raised each time was necessary
- conflict detected 2 minutes before it could take place
- orders given to aircraft respecting their operational capabilities
- emergency landing order correctly sent when necessaryĀ ā¦
Human factors and Social Acceptance Assessment
Thanks to a survey and several interviews, this Work Package identified some conditions for the social acceptance of UAMĀ : not only should it bring benefits to all citizens, but it should also be used first and foremost for emergency and disaster management, medical transport and monitoring public infrastructure. It should use renewable energy sources, clearly define certifications and rules in case of accidents. To finish there is concern about the noise of such traffic.
This work also highlighted some more controversal and non unanimous opinionsĀ : among these, safety concerns on possible accidents, a general public distrust of technology, a possible negative impact on the environment, the creation of social inequalities, and the danger on privacy. As for passenger transport, it is accepted with difficulty if there is no pilot on board.
The radio link between the vehicles and the supervisor
This Work Package aimed to provide the infrastructure to enable a set of U-Space services including strategic and tactical deconfliction. Thanks to specific prototype boxes containing radios (one on board, one on ground) the supervisor can receive information and send orders to the pilot through a Backbone server centralizing the information. The system uses both 4G and a certified radio link.
The resultsĀ ? The 9 km range was achieved with almost no error, data was sent every second as planned, and more than 99% of the data was received and processed within 2 seconds.
The essence of the project : TindAIR software
This prototype software connects to the backbone server. It
- tracks the aircraft (position, speed, altitudeā¦)
- monitors the flight (trajectory analysis to detect flight plan deviation, emergecy messages, alerts raisedā¦)
- manages tactical deconfliction (prediction of trajectories in the next 2 minutes, detection of tactical conflict, conflict alert raised, conflict resolution by proposing several solutions).
The solutions proposed are:
- rerouting of one aircraft
- change of speed or altitude, holding solution (aircraft hovers)
- emergency landing in case of lost connection with the pilot or failure of an aircraft for example.
The demonstrations
The 4 exercices followed the use cases proposed by the demo plan (you can find information on the demonstrations in previous articles). The major part of the demonstration objectives was validated:
- demonstrating conflict detection and resolution by sending solutions considering flight priorities
- automatically detecting conflicts between two crossing drone trajectories and solving them considering flight priorities
- demonstrating the system capability to solve conflicts considering priorities between flights, and the rest of the traffic to avoid the creation of another conflict
- automatically detecting an emergency and reacting accordingly
Conclusion ? The results confirm the technical and practical feasibility of the proposed TINDAiR system. āļøā
Demonstration results have shown the TINDAiR system is able to do several thingsĀ :
- detect and resolve conflicts at strategic and tactical levels
- manage emergencies by the detection of hazardous situations and by ordering suitable emergency landing orders
- ensure indispensable services such as Tracking, Network identification, Traffic information, Geo-awareness or Monitoring.
Flight results have shown that the TINDAiR system is compliant with the ConOps flow of operations (at least within the limitations of the flight demonstration scenarios).
Strategic and Tactical De-confliction Services were tested in a relevant environment, and their coordination with other U-space services (Tracking, Emergency Management, Geo-awareness, etc.) was also demonstrated
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