CATEC participated in the technological milestone of the first flight in the world with an unmanned aircraft monitored with this system, carried out in Seville
The Center of Network Excellence of the Vodafone Group located in Spain, in collaboration with the Center for Advanced Aerospace Technologies (CATEC) and the Sevillian company Skylife Engineering, have made the first flight in the world of an identified drone, geolocated and controlled through a 4G mobile network beyond the line of sight, carried out in Seville between Isla Mayor and Utrera.
The drone, equipped with a SIM data, covered 32 km at low altitude in 25 minutes, controlled and monitored remotely with the Vodafone 4G network which also acted as a radar. The device incorporated a software based on the protocol for unmanned air traffic management.
This new technological milestone has been possible thanks to the public-private collaboration between Vodafone, the regional Government of Andalusia and other Andalusian companies and entities. In fact, the preliminary flight tests have been carried out in our ATLAS Experimental Flight Center in Jaen. In the same way, CATEC has been in charge of adapting the equipment that takes part of the drone, as well as the software that allows integrating the air system with the Vodafone network; and the Andalusian company Skylife Engineering was in charge of the infrastructure and software for receiving telemetry data, signal levels and position.
Francisco Roman, president of Vodafone Spain, and Susana Díaz, president of the Junta de Andalucia, participated in the presentation of the flight.
This flight allows laying the foundations so that in the future drones equipped with SIM 4G can be located and controlled remotely using mobile telephone networks. Thus, it would be possible to supervise and land them in case of access to demarcated areas as restricted (airports and aerodromes, military facilities, chemical plants …), and ultimately the control of the airspace of drones (U-Space). In addition, this solution will make it possible to boost the use of drones safely in different sectors of economic activity such as: logistics, fleet management and transport, agriculture, border surveillance, critical infrastructures, fields in which significant economic growth is expected in the next years.
