17.02.2020

How can drone traffic be organised more efficiently?

As a pioneer in the operation of unmanned drones, HHLA Sky will take part in the forward-looking project UDVeo (urban drone traffic efficiently organised). The HHLA subsidiary is one of several management, research and business partners that are coordinated by the Helmut Schmidt University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg and supported by the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure.

Using the Hamburg metropolitan region as an example, an IT-based guidance system for unmanned aircraft will be developed which will encompass licensing, flight planning, monitoring and control. The focus will be on creating a legal framework and presenting an overall technical concept.

Beyond this, a prototype for an administrative control centre for the secure and efficient operation of drones will also be developed. The necessary procedures and IT processes for customers to register drones and flights will be developed to be as easy to use as possible.

Matthias Gronstedt, manager at HHLA Sky, hopes such a system can serve as a model for other urban regions in particular, due to Hamburg’s complex and dense infrastructure.

HHLA Sky wants to carry out the test flights planned for the project in a partially automated mode. The company is the first in the world to develop an end-to-end drone system that enables the scalable and secure operation of drones beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS). Customers can integrate the system into their own business processes independently, or use it as a service operated by HHLA Sky.

HHLA Sky’s specially developed industrial drones are extremely robust, very light and equipped with all available safety technology. In principle, they can carry out every conceivable assignment from civil and industrial safety at airports and industrial sites, to environmental monitoring and surveying grounds and buildings. In addition, HHLA Sky installs complete drone control centres that monitor both its own and other drones.