Partners in the DEMORPAS project recently completed a series of live flight trials, demonstrating how drones can be successfully controlled in operational and simulated emergency scenarios in a mixed environment involving manned aircraft and drone. The trials were performed during two campaigns between 23 October and 23 November 2015 at Matacán Air Base, a civil-military aerodrome located close to Salamanca in Spain.
The trials were conducted by DEMORPAS, a project co-funded by the SESAR Joint Undertaking which was performed by a consortium composed of a multidisciplinary team of companies and institutions, ISDEFE (project coordinator), CRIDA, ENAIRE, FADA-CATEC and INTA with the collaboration of the Spanish Air Safety Agency and the Spanish Air Force. Together, the DEMORPAS team have assessed what is needed to safely integrate drones into civil airspace. For this purpose, the project involved a wide range of stakeholders from the RPAS operations lifecycle: research centres, system engineering organisations, designers, airspace users and air navigation service providers.
In the first campaign a RPAS ALO (which stands for Avión Ligero de Observación), developed by INTA, performed live flight trials in an automatic mode, following air traffic control (ATC) instructions for taxi, take off, climb and cruise to the work area defined (30-65 km east of the airport). As the flight proceeded, the drone was controlled by air traffic controllers from different ATC units (ground, approach and en-route). Once in the work zone two scenarios were executed: one scenario involving a regular flight where an operational mission is flown and another scenario where several emergencies were simulated, such as data-link loss, GPS failure and partial engine failure. The flights were entirely controlled by military ATC units supported by civil air traffic controllers from ENAIRE at Madrid ACC. No manned aircraft was included in these flights.
In the second campaign the operations were performed with the RPAS ALO and an experimental aircraft STEMME S-15 INTA, manned by two pilots from the Spanish Air Force’s logistics centre for armaments and experimentation (CLAEX). The operation consisted of a real flight in which a conflict between the ALO and STEMME S-15 was simulated. Such a conflict and some simulated emergencies were successfully solved by the air traffic controller in accordance with the defined procedures.
Based on the obtained results, DEMORPAS has demonstrated that the integration of drones into non-segregated airspace is feasible, and has provided recommendations on a number of issues that need to be further addressed. Such recommendations are taken on board in future SESAR R&D calls in the domain of drone integration.