Use of unmanned aerial vehicles
Unmanned aircraft are being researched at the Institute of Flight Systems with regard to their diverse range of possible applications. While some uses, such as photography and inspection, are already becoming increasingly common in everyday life, other applications still face technological and regulatory hurdles that must be overcome through research.
Humanitarien aid requires the delivery of large quantities of cargo – such as food or medicine – to hard-to-reach regions. For unmanned aircraft to meaningfully support this use-case, research is particularly focused on their size and payload capacity. Revolutionary in this context is the introduction of EASA’s drone specific category that allows even larger unmanned aircraft to operate with relatively low certification effort while maintaining a consistently low overall risk. In the case of humanitarian aid within this specific category, we have been involved from the very beginning – both in regulatory support and research – from the conceptual phase through to the first real-world deployments.
Another use-case for cargo transport with unmanned aircraft is the logistical supply of offshore wind farms. Due to their location on the open sea, the maintenance and servicing of offshore wind farms is a costly endeavor, as it has so far only been possible using ships or manned helicopters. The use of unmanned aircraft offers the potential for cost savings and increased efficiency. The focus here is on research topics such as the interaction and communication between the unmanned aircraft and the wind farm.
Unmanned aircraft that can autonomously and fully automatically transport people without a pilot on board must be fully certified and meet very high safety standards. However, with ongoing development and validation, this will also become possible. One potential use-case for such passenger transport drones is in rescue operations and the evacuation of injured individuals. Similar to a rescue helicopter, unmanned aircraft have the advantage of reaching the scene quickly via the air. This advantage was demonstrated during initial deployments in disaster relief operations.
Of course, military use-cases of unmanned aircraft are also a very important topic for us. In this context, we focus, for example, on improving the flight performance of various unmanned aircraft configurations and on teaming – that is, the corporation between manned and unmanned systems, or between multiple unmanned systems.
