Demonstrator 1

Description

To demonstrate the service drone deployment in an urban area and integration into the Smart City infrastructure. Important considerations to take into account are the inclusion of future-proof technology solutions and best practices in which U-Space supporting infrastructure and services are developed that may be deployed in the larger cities. Development of the Urban Air mobility infrastructure will start on the Living Labs. Multi-purpose heliports are to be deployed to serve for parking and charging of service drones. Those may be implemented in the form of smart lampposts with ‘bird-nests’ in place to charge the drone to enable long-distance delivery. The heliports may be equipped with a variety of modules so that service drones can interchange to achieve the best match for the requested mission. Heliports may be equipped with cargo bays or lockers which enable to fit in a cargo container. Surveying with the community to investigate the social perception concerning subjects like noise and added quality to their lives. The final main objective of this demonstrator is to prepare Living Labs to reduce the carbon footprint and atmospheric pollution concerning road traffic transport means:

• To prepare the integration of urban air mobility services into the multi-modal urban transport system of the city to improve policies aiming to boost the use of zero-emission vehicles.
• Avoid unnecessary waste of time (and energy) in public transport, official and emergency services, the distribution of goods (loading and unloading) and delivery of parcels.
• To streamline the placement of charging stations for drones and electric vehicles (both surface and underground, public and private) and give real-time information to the user of their availability in real-time. This will optimise recharging times and save energy by reducing search times for available points and facilitate and promote the use of zero-emission vehicles in the Historic District, improving air quality.
• Data collection and integration with urban air mobility services to improve planning and management of the urban mobility (flows, peak times, bottlenecks, zones of difficult accessibility, improved last-mile supply and delivery...). This data collected will be published as Open Data and can be used by scientists, legislators, planners and managers when possible.

Background

The Living Labs has been selected ensuring they have a majority of the attributes typical to big cities. Under the UAM initiative in the Living Labs, local stakeholders gather the best practices to experiment and contribute to the development of the local UAM infrastructure that may be referenced, replicated and scaled to other cities and communities. Nordic challenges: Due to the geographical position of the City of Oulu and Tartu, local U-Space operations are exposed to severe Nordic environment conditions. The Nordic U-Space technological and operational challenges – what are those and how to tackle them to achieve safe, secure and all-weather resilient UAS technologies.

Results

• To achieve the pilot deployment of a service drone and creating a set of requirements for the service drones supporting infrastructure. The supporting infrastructure includes: reflection in business models, integration into the supply chain and service provisioning schemas, availability of interfaces, including end-user, a broad range of communication means covering all operational areas, drone identification and tracking methods, UTM, power supply infrastructure enhanced with energy harvesting technologies, and compliance with EU and national regulations and policies and MyData movement.
• A blueprint of the Urban Air Mobility infrastructure for cities to secure the deployment in the other Living Labs and create a European standard.
• New urban transport policies to improve mobility including urban air services.
• Data collection to improve planning and management of the recharging stations, and flying zones.