700361Commercialisation of new applications for light unmanned aircraftClosedGRD Proof of MarketInnovate UKProof of market funding is sought for assessing the commercial viability of developing and offering new services with Small Unmanned Aircraft (SUA) for civilian customers. SUA is a CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) classification covering aircraft weighing less than 7Kg and requiring minimal regulations over their operations in UK airspace. This requires research to quantify what the market wants or is likely to want in future; to assess and evaluate emerging and latent technologies that can meet these requirements; and to understand the likely regulatory and legal framework that these craft will have to operate in. All three are needed in order to for businesses to offer professional and commercial grade services. There are good indicators that the the market for SUA for civilian applications is growing globally. In the UK, current use of SUAs is mainly as platforms for video and photography for the leisure market with some use in industrial survey and public service roles such as the police. The long term commercial viability of these is still uncertain. Industry and the user community propose more novel applications and services such as: ability to carry different payloads such as IR, radar, air quality sniffers, noise monitoring, more autonomous operations with on board intelligence to allow and ‘sense-and-avoid’, enable handover, evasive manoeuvre under specific conditions, wider use in disaster management, monitoring land use and other applications. However none of these are likely to see commercial operations while developments of such craft are largely uncoordinated and left to the vendors to drive forward as no one is sure what the market for this segment is likely to be. We believe there is a huge potential market both in the UK and globally for SUA services suited for the civilian professional market. But this requires sustained and coordinated marketing and R & D effort, which is the purpose of this project