Funding guaranteed for first three years of ASTRAEA research, development and demonstration activity
The Autonomous Systems Technology Related Airborne Evaluation and Assessment (ASTRAEA) initiative to normalise unmanned air vehicle operations in UK airspace has been formally launched, following a guarantee of £32 million ($59 million) in funding.
The joint financing agreement, which involves 13 different government and industry entities with funding provided on a 50:50 basis, covers the first three years of research, development and demonstration activity by the ASTRAEA partnership from January 2006.
“The programme will feature technology and infrastructure development, demonstrations and then the evolution of the regulations,” says ASTRAEA steering board chairman Simon Jewell. “We will do that progressively over time. The goal of seeing UAV operations in normal flight is still a long way away, but nevertheless it is starting and it starts today.”
The ASTRAEA framework has yet to receive a formal contract, but Jewell says: “We expect to do so over the next couple of months. We have most of the hurdles behind us.”
Technical implementation of the three-year programme will begin with a six-month analysis of enabling technologies to facilitate safe UAV operations in non-segregated airspace. That analysis will focus on the potential for developing standardised UAV health monitoring systems to support increased air vehicle reliability, sense-and-avoid concepts, and robust communications systems.
The analysis process will be restricted to existing technologies that can be matured over the following 18 months to form the basis of the prototype ASTRAEA air traffic integration architecture.
The final year of activity, starting in January 2008, will see a series of flight demonstrations to incrementally test and verify the architecture elements. Additional flight tests are expected earlier in the programme to support maturation, potentially involving both unmanned systems and manned aircraft operating as UAV surrogates.
The ParcAberporth UAV centre of excellence in west Wales will be used throughout the programme to support technology integration and testing activities.
ASTRAEA was set up by the UK Department of Trade and Industry in July 2004.
Source: Flight International
