System for High Integrity Monitoring of Advanced-Air-Mobility Network Operations (SHIMANO)

This project consists of a consortium of organisations with expertise in engineering, aviation, and business to provide a clear path for development, testing and exploitation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The key areas of expertise include heavy lift UAV platforms, radar and radar identification technology, Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS) communication, Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) data systems and integration, regulatory approval, and public exploitation.

This project is particularly innovative as it incorporates technology that has not yet been used on a wide-scale, and aims to influence the UK CAA standards to pave the way for commercialisation of drone systems, placing it at the heart of the expanding Future of Flight marketplace.

The project addresses the challenge of how truly resilient and cost-effective localised communication, navigation and surveillance is possible in high-risk Very Low-Level Flight (VLLF) environments and how this localised information can augment existing Air Traffic Management (ATM) and UTM technologies to provide enhanced situational awareness.

The potential value of the use of UAVs to provide such services has been demonstrated in controlled environments. However, to realise the full societal impact of such concepts requires additional safety systems to be deployed and operated, such that the services may be available everywhere and to everyone in need. For example, in the event of a major incident in an urban area, gridlocked road traffic can delay the arrival of ambulances. Motorcycle paramedics are now common, but they are a compromise between speed and equipment carried. UAVs will allow additional medical supplies to be quickly delivered to the scene, so that motorcycle paramedics can treat a greater number of patients without expending their available supplies.

The systems developed in this project will demonstrate resilient, accurate and safe operation of a UAV capable of delivery of equipment into complex high-risk environments. Trials of this system will help to establish wider commercial business applications for UAVs through demonstrating the significant benefits of localised situational awareness in critical scenarios such as take-off, landing and navigating in complex urban environments. Trials will also provide a platform to deliver and test operational requirements to identify the infrastructure and operational process requirements to provide an integrated ATM/UTM environment for future UAV operations and inform UK CAA of the standards that should be implemented to enable national exploitation of the technology.