Europe could take centre stage in the development of civil UAVs, according to a new roadmap. The keys are greater investment and better air traffic integration
Development of a European market for civil unmanned air vehicles will surge dramatically around 2009-10 as air traffic integration and certification issues are overcome, says the newly released European civil UAV roadmap.
It says Europe needs to act now to take the lead in developing the technologies to meet this burgeoning market.
The roadmap has come out of two projects: the European Commission-funded UAVNET and Civil UAV Applications and Economic Effectivity of Potential Configurations (CAPECON). The roadmap projects the civil UAV market will double from forecast new revenues of €8.5 million ($10.5 million) in 2006 to €15.5 million in 2007. By 2008 revenues will have doubled again to €31 million.
But from 2010 the civil market will break the €100 million mark, with new annual revenues worth €137 million in 2011, rising to €270 million in 2015. The forecasts were developed by Frost & Sullivan under a support contract to UAVNET.
The roadmap forecasts Earth observation to be the dominant civil UAV market, representing 37% of likely demand with a revenue potential of €442 million up to 2015. Telecommunications and maritime surveillance roles are each expected to comprise 13% of the market over the same period, representing potential revenues of €156 and €150 million, respectively.
New markets
Forest-fire management roles represent 12% of the potential market, with a value of €136 million. Law-enforcement is seen as accounting for only 3% of the overall civil market, but would still be worth about €35 million in new revenues up to 2015.
The roadmap says that “civil UAV systems have several potential cost benefits to offer to a number of industries”, but also says that “the degree that civil UAV systems impact business margins will determine how widely UAV technology pervades European society in the coming decades”.
Clear cost advantages for civil UAVs will not be found in the initial purchase price, the roadmap says, and system costs “may match the cost of procuring a manned aircraft”. Instead, civil UAVs are likely to be most competitive over their full in-service life because they will require a reduced logistics support chain, with lower maintenance costs, personnel and fuel costs.
The roadmap calls on Europe to ensure that EC-funded civil UAV development work carried out under the UAVNET and CAPECON projects, among others, should not be allowed to “wither away into the past. Rather, it should use these initiatives as an impetus into the future”. CAPECON and UAVNET formally ended last year.
Formal adoption of the roadmap would allow Europe to “position itself centre-stage, influencing the technologies for generations to come. Furthermore, small to medium enterprises will have an opportunity to enter this exciting market and flourish with innovative designs and disruptive technologies. Europe will stop the brain drain in the fields related to aeronautics and related supply chains.”
There are three main restraints to development of the civil UAV market, the roadmap says: a lack of investment, slow progress of UAV integration into controlled airspace, and a focus on military as opposed to civil market opportunities by most UAV manufacturers in the aerospace and defence. The latter factor means the civil UAV market represents a significant opportunity for new market entrants, particularly small to medium enterprises. However, new business models are required, for example pay per use or contracting of services, rather than outright UAV system ownership by civil user organisations.
The roadmap says the most likely sources of finance for new civil UAV development efforts are “potential end users and governmental or similar investment”.
The roadmap proposes establishment of a new EC civil UAV co-ordinating organisation. The organisation would also have pan-European responsibility for defining autonomous operation requirements. These comprise safety, including sense-and-avoid capabilities in the air and at airport operations and in emergency response requirements; communications links, including spectrum and security issues management; and technology requirements monitoring and planning, including a role in developing standards for civil UAV subsystems.
The three-tier organisation would be headed by a co-ordination and steering committee empowered to “provide the necessary strong leadership to overcome the challenges that lay ahead”. Key roles for that committee would include ongoing civil UAV market appraisals, technology monitoring, social and economic impact monitoring, development of preliminary engineering definitions for development activities, evolution of the roadmap and overall programme risk management.
The second tier of the organisation would comprise steering committees for each of the four UAV development programmes outlined in the roadmap, each tasked to refine design metrics, undertake risk-management planning and oversee the development efforts. This tier would also be supported by the establishment of user forums for each class of UAV “so that the research and development is synchronised with the market requirements. This forum will also explore futuristic application and will not limit itself only to immediate needs.”
Working groups
The final tier would comprise working groups for each of the designs, with these organised along subsystem lines and tasked with development of specific work packages and detailed implementation plans for each platform.
On establishment, the new organisation’s first task would be to review the roadmap and prepare detailed financial estimates for its implementation. “Once established, this co-ordinating organisation will facilitate the management and successful completion of the projects within the roadmap, helping to ensure they are delivered on time, within budget and to the required standard. In addition the organisation will identify sources of possible funding and will co-ordinate technology efforts with resources.”
Phase two of the roadmap implementation programme would focus on refining initial civil UAV designs developed over the past four years by CAPECON. Key technical activities would include detailed airframe design work on single high-altitude, medium-altitude, rotary-wing and mini-UAV configurations, while policy efforts would focus on the formulation of a common European framework for the inclusion of UAVs into controlled airspace. The new agency would also seek to engage potential customers in the implementation programme.
Refinement of potential customer requirements and starting demonstrator construction of each of the four UAV types would form the basis of phase three. The demonstrator construction phase would also give priority to development of advanced tooling and manufacturing techniques to support production. The development phase would be paralleled by the final formulation of a European certification and regulatory environment for full civil UAV integration into controlled airspace.
Phase four – proof of concept – would see initial flights of the new demonstrators and the start of a trials programme that would include partial integration of the UAVs into controlled airspace. Those trials would evolve into full-scenario flight testing. The final phase of the programme would seek to take the UAVs into full-scale production and achieve complete airspace integration.
The enabling technologies needing additional research and development, says the roadmap, are safety, UAV reliability and system costs.
Safety-focused technologies would include autonomous navigation; automatic take-off and landing; emergency handling; failsafe avionics that would permit constant diagnostic and prognostic activities across an entire UAV system; “green propulsion” and increasing air vehicle endurance to months and years.
Reliability initiatives
Moves to improve reliability would include explorating component reduction within subsystems; fused sensor collision-avoidance systems for ground manoeuvring and airborne sense-and-avoid; improved overall system redundancy; novel flight termination systems that mitigate the potential for third-party damage; improved propulsion systems; and improved communications.
Cost-reduction concepts include more efficient air-vehicle aerodynamics; cleaner propulsion; and improved payload technologies and concepts, including standardisation of interfaces, use of plug-and-play systems, reduced power demands and advanced multi-sensing capabilities. Reduced air-vehicle weight targets are proposed, including a 25% cut in airframe structure weight and a 5% decrease in subsystem weight. The development of new ground stations with advanced human-machine interfaces are proposed, to improve operator efficiency by 50% allowing personnel numbers to be halved.
The roadmap says more efficient operating and maintenance methodologies would incorporate commercially available parts, including adaptation of automobile industry components, use of advanced computer-design methods to optimise production, and use of commercial technology for air vehicle and ground-control system communications. This latter element alone is forecast to achieve an overall communications cost reduction of around 50%.
PETER LA FRANCHI / LONDON
Source: Flight International
