The Advanced Centre for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC), together with the aeronautical engineering companies AERTEC and Pildo Labs and the University of Seville have successfully completed in Seville, in the context of the U-ELCOME Project, a series of tests in a real environment aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of transporting goods, in this case medical cargo, over long distances using drones and UAS.

The U-ELCOME project is coordinated by Eurocontrol, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, and aims to demonstrate the safe and reliable integration of commercial activities with drones in airspace. Seville and Jaen are two of the 15 locations, spread across Spain, France and Italy, where these trials will be carried out, which will help accelerate the uptake of U-Space services in Europe.

U-space is a set of digital and automated services designed to enable the safe and efficient access of a large number of unmanned aircraft to the same airspace. U-space is an enabling framework for the development of UAS operations, their integration and coexistence with manned aviation (air traffic management services, ATM, and air navigation services, ANS).

The trials in Seville were a test of how UAS in U-space airspace can optimise medical cargo deliveries in urban, intercity and rural environments by improving the efficiency, safety and sustainability of operations. The key, on this occasion, was the combination of digital and physical infrastructure capabilities. The feasibility of the concept has been demonstrated and flights in real scenarios will be carried out shortly.

The test involved the collection in a hospital area of several medical loads (medicines, defibrillator, surgical equipment…) with a drone from the University of Seville, which took them to a nearby runway where a UAS TARSIS was waiting, which was responsible for quickly transferring the medical load up to several tens of kilometres, where, upon landing, the load was transferred to another small drone, responsible for carrying it to its destination point, in an area of difficult access. The flights were BVLOS (beyond the pilot’s line of sight) and were performed automatically.

These trials have demonstrated the feasibility of conducting UAS operations supported by U-space U1 and U2 services. This means that both the basic U-space services (U1), which include e-registration, e-identification and geo-awareness, and also the initial services (U2), which include flight planning, approval, tracking, dynamic airspace information and information exchange with air traffic management (ATM) systems, have been validated.

This project has received funding from the European Executive Agency for Climate, Infrastructure and Environment (CINEA) under grant agreement no. 101079171.