The lack of clear standards is holding back the development of drone-related business, both at a global level and in Europe. Several studies and surveys (as for instance the European Drones Outlook Study, issued by SESAR) identify a reliable regulatory and standardisation framework as one of the main potential boosters for the drone business. Nevertheless, to foster the growth of a safe drone usage, there is a need to implement coherent and interoperable global standards. The European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme funded AW-Drones to tackle these issues.
AW-Drones facilitates the ongoing European Union rulemaking process for the definition of rules, technical standards and procedures for civilian drones to enable safe, environmentally sound and reliable operations in the EU. This target will be achieved through 2 sub-goals. The project will make available an Open Repository of “best practices” to support the European Aviation Safety Agency’s (EASA) and the European Commission’s (EC) rulemaking process for the definition of rules, technical standards and procedures for drones.
AW-Drones will also contribute to the identification and validation of a well-reasoned set of technical standards for operations, appropriate for all relevant categories of drones. These standards will be presented into an easy-to-navigate knowledge platform, open to all stakeholders. The repository will contain information on standards maturity level, coverage of regulation and identified gaps. When the information collected is sufficient, the Open Repository will be released and users will be able to consult it. The system will enable advanced researches by category of operations, technical domain and applicable standards.
Furthermore AW-Drones will share the knowledge produced with the EASA, the National CAAs, and standardization bodies (e.g. EUROCAE, JARUS, ISO…) to contribute to their awareness of the current global drones’ rulemaking and standardization state-of-the-art and “best practices”.
The Institute of Flight Guidance supports the Institute of Flight Systems in this project in all questions and topics regarding Air Traffic Management (ATM) and Ground Control Station (GCS). Both institutes collect technical rules, procedures and standards already developed for the commercial use of drones worldwide. A critical assessment of all collected data will be performed to identify a thorough set of best practices, gaps and bottlenecks, as complete as possible, for the safe use of civilian drones in the EU.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 824292.
Blyenburgh & Co. CERTH/HIT Deep Blue (Coordinator) DELAIR DJI EuroUSC Italia FSF-MED IAI NLR ORTELIO TU Delft Unifly