From design to the safe integration in the airspace
Unmanned Aircraft Systems
Urban Air Mobility – Unmanned Aircraft Systems in urban airspace
Highly automated aircraft varieties are increasingly being used in passenger and air freight transport in both urban and sparsely populated areas. Prototypes grant an initial insight into how Urban Air Mobility might work in the future.
Flight tests with drones in the City-ATM project, with which DLR is demonstrating a density-based airspace management concept together with external partners. It provides the basis for making optimum use of a wide variety of aircraft in the airspace.
Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) are already being applied in various ways – supplying poorly connected areas with medicines, providing disaster relief, in agricultural applications and supporting the transport of manufacturing parts between industrial sites. Technological progress has also led to the emergence of a new industry in the field of autonomous systems, with UAS set to become an increasingly prevalent solution for rapid and low-emission personal transport within urban areas or between cities. As air taxis, they will represent a new element of individual mobility and prove an integral part of future transport concepts. In addition to flexible and environmentally friendly air transport in conurbations, such urban air mobility will improve the efficiency of freight and passenger transport in urban locations and overland, as well as taking some of the pressure off road networks.
Unmanned Aircraft Systems pose many new challenges for researchers, manufacturers, operators and legislators. In addition to the purely technical aspects, integrating UAS into the existing airspace also raises complex operational and legal questions that need to be investigated and regulated from scratch. Due to the complex nature of the issues, it is no longer enough to study the subsystems separately, such as looking at the vehicle without reference to flight guidance or statutory regulations. Instead, they should be considered, tested, validated and certified using a whole-system approach.
Research into highly automated UAS and integrating them safely into airspace
DLR has taken on the role of an architect for unmanned flight, forging a link between manufacturers, users and legislators with regard to technical and regulatory issues. Thanks to its numerous institutes, DLR is unique in Europe – having the necessary range of research areas and expertise to address unresolved issues in the headline areas of vehicle technology, flight guidance, legislation and acceptance research. Interdisciplinary research across DLR is also being pooled and tested at the National Experimental Test Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Cochstedt which provides a unique test field. Not only is this test centre an important platform for networking and coordinating activities in UAS research, but it also facilitates the continued development of UAS technologies. Therefore, DLR is set to play a leading role in the development of scientific and economic progress in unmanned flight.
DLR's UAS research portfolio
Safe integration of unmanned aircraft in the airspace
Vehicle design and systems development
Unmanned Airspace and Traffic Management (U-space/UTM)
Urban Air Mobility (UAM)
Performance-based operations
Swarm research
Flight termination technologies
Charging systems
Detect & Avoid
Interference-resistant navigation systems
Safety and cybersecurity
Testing and validation
Certification
Drone defence technologie
Acceptance and environment
Optimal planning and execution of missions for new air traffic participants
Testing new concepts and technologies
News on the topic
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Vision of a Drone - Automated Low Altitude Air Delivery (ALAADy)
Unmanned cargo aircraft: researchers at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) are developing new technologies for safe, flexible and economical freight delivery. They are analyzing different aircraft and their potential for automation. Within the project ALAADy (Automated Low Altitude Air Delivery), DLR is investigating automated and unmanned freight delivery. The flight in very low level altitudes below 500 feet with comparably large scale aircraft is especially innovative. Safety, technological feasibility and economical aspects are core elements of the project. Relevant applications are transportation of time critical cargo like replacement parts or humanitarian goods. For these applications, specialized aircraft concepts are designed to carry around one metric ton of payload and airspace integration is explored. Key components for safe operation and certification of drones are concepts recently published by EASA. Whether such an automatic transport system is safe and feasible using these new concepts is one of the main questions the researchers are studying. For this purpose the whole systems including its operation is analyzed within a realistic simulation environment. Additionally, a prototype based on a gyrocopter is developed to investigate aspects of the study in flight test.
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Drone operations impacted by danger spot – City-ATM Phase 2
In the City-ATM project, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is working with partners to develop an airspace management and traffic control concept for the integration of new airspace participants, such as unmanned aerial vehicles or air taxis, into uncontrolled airspace.
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DRIVER+ – Improving crisis management in Europe
For the EU project DRIVER+ (Driving Innovation in Crisis Management for European Resilience), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) provided real-time aerial images in a disaster control exercise in Eisenerz/Austria in order to provide crucial support for situation recording and rescue logistics of disasters in the future.
