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CAA announces appointment of new Safety and Airspace Regulation Director

The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is pleased to confirm the appointment of Rob Bishton as its new Group Director of Safety and Airspace Regulation. This follows a global recruitment process, including both internal and external candidates.

Rob has been at the CAA since 2014, where he is currently Head of Flight Operations and a member of the Safety and Airspace Regulation’s senior leadership team. He has extensive experience in the aviation industry, including as former Operations Director at Fastjet and as a commercial pilot with over 10,000 flying hours. Rob also brings significant board experience and is currently a non-executive director of the UK Flight Safety Committee. He is also a former general aviation helicopter pilot and intends to start flying light aircraft again.

He will take up his new post on 6 November and will assume accountability for all the CAA’s safety and airspace regulatory functions. He will also become an executive director and sit on the CAA board. Rob will take over from Mark Swan, who is leaving the CAA after 11 years to take up the new role of Head of the Airspace Change Organising Group (ACOG).

Richard Moriarty, Chief Executive of the CAA, said: “I am delighted to appoint Rob as Group Director of Safety and Airspace Regulation. His drive, focus, and experience will be crucial as we tackle some of the big issues in aviation in the coming years. Rob has already made a huge impact on the CAA in his current role, and I look forward to working closely with him as we undertake our most important duty – protecting the travelling public.

“I’d also like to offer my most heartfelt thanks to Mark Swan, who leaves the CAA after 11 years. Mark has reformed the way the CAA approaches our safety regulation, introducing performance-based oversight, and has made an enormous impact on the culture of the organisation. He will be much-missed, and we all wish him the best for his new role, where we will no doubt still have the opportunity to work together as we strive to modernise airspace.”

Commenting on his appointment, Rob Bishton, said: “I am really thrilled to be stepping into this role at such a critical time for UK aviation. Whether it is the integration of drones into our skies or the modernisation of the UK’s airspace, we are in the midst of both a challenging and rewarding period. I look forward to working with colleagues as well as the whole sector – both commercial and general aviation – so that we can continue to lay claim to one of the safest aviation systems in the world.”

Notes to editors

Biographical notes

A commercial pilot by trade, Rob has extensive management and regulatory experience in the aviation sector. He has over 10,000 flying hours, including as captain, on a wide range of aircraft (Boeing 737, 757, 767, 777, 787 and Airbus A320 family) as well as broad experience as a trainer and examiner. He was Group Operations Director at Fastjet, as well as a former Chief Pilot and Head of Flight Operations at easyJet.

He has held various other management and training roles in airlines. He currently represents the Safety and Airspace Regulation Group at the CAA’s International Group Executive Committee and is a member of the Industry Resilience Group. Rob is also a keen sportsman, having played football for Aston Villa and worked as an instructor at the British Academy of Motorsport.

The Civil Aviation Authority

4th October 2019

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IMechE UAS Challenge 2020

Key Calendar dates

Registration open: 16 September 2019
Registration close: 30 October 2019
Welcome seminar/webinar: 8 November 2019

Launched six years ago, UAS Challenge provides an educational platform to university teams to learn practical aerospace engineering skills, enhance employability opportunity in the sector and develop soft skills such as team working, leadership, commercial skills as well as technical competence.

Since its launch over 1000 students from UK and International universities participated in the competition and many have been recruited by industry partners into full time roles following their graduation.

“The UAS Challenge is an excellent introduction to the design and development process used by industry to create safe and high-performance aircraft. It will challenge your team working skills and test your approach to innovation. You will have the opportunity to demonstrate your creation in an exciting fly-off at the stunning location of the UAS test airfield in Wales. Have fun and gain some very valuable experience for your future engineering career.”
Lambert Dopping-Hepenstal, Head Judge, UAS Challenge

New features of the competition

For the 2020 competition, teams will see a few significant changes to the rules:

Change to mission and payload, encouraging new designs
Introduction of packaging box and modular assembly challenge
Measure of fuel/power consumption and efficiency introduced, with power logger.

“The IMechE UAS Challenge has consistently delivered a complex real world scenario in order to test and develop university students competing and provide unique recruitment opportunities for industry. The competition continues to grow for the 2020 with the refinement of the aid mission, introduction of aircraft performance monitoring and an increase to two flight lines.
“The IMechE has focused in on STEM engagement for the last two years of the competition and continues grow its STEM outreach on an international scale. The competition’s presence and accessibility to all
universities around the world, makes it a pioneer of aerospace engineering, taking input from academia and industry to evolve as required to meet the needs of the future engineering sector. The preparations are well underway for 2020 and we look forward to the biggest turn out for the UAS Challenge yet.”
Alex Robbins, UAS Challenge Project Manager

This year, for the first time, the UAS Challenge will be hosting a welcome seminar in November, where teams, volunteers, sponsors and organisers will meet to discuss the project lifecycle, project deliverables and what targets you should achieve win the Grand Champion title of the UAS Challenge.

STEM outreach programme

The UAS Challenge provides a unique opportunity to promote STEM careers to young people. Students have the opportunity to not only to witness practical engineering being demonstrated, but also the chance to speak to engineers from many different backgrounds and stages of their career.

“Seeing the enthusiasm with which the university teams interacted with the visiting students this year was fantastic. Having the students hear about engineering from people so passionate, and seeing from this event how science, technology, engineering and maths can be applied to help solve the worlds’ problems is an invaluable inspiration to encourage young people to follow a career in engineering.”
Jon Tayler, UAS Challenge STEM Leader

In 2019, 120 local students took part in the event onsite. Alongside talking with the university teams and seeing the air systems fly, the students were invited to participate in practical engineering workshops intended to spark an interest in following a career in engineering.

The STEM Outreach Programme aims to build up on 2019’s success for the 2020 event.

Where and when does the Challenge take place?

The UAS Challenge returns to Snowdonia Aerospace Centre in Llanbedr, Wales from 17 June to 20 June 2020. The venue is ideal in its layout, facilities and structure as well as its appeal as a well-known drone test centre.

How do I get involved?

To find out more about volunteering at, supporting sponsoring or participating in the competition visit www.imeche.org/uaschallenge or email uaschallenge@imeche.org.

To advertise the Challenge at your university, download our poster (pdf 1.4MB).

Sponsoring the Challenge

The 2019 Challenge was sponsored by industry partners such as GKN Aerospace, Bombardier, the Welsh Government and Gwynedd Council as well as QinetiQ, Raytheon and Frazer-Nash Consultancy.

The IMechE UAS Challenge Links

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Maharashtra govt, India, plans to deliver emergency medicines through drones

Zipline drones will make on-demand and emergency deliveries of blood products, vaccines and life-saving medications

Workers pack a box of vaccines to be delivered by a Zipline drone in Ghana | Photo: Reuters

After African countries like Ghana and Rwanda, now the Maharashtra government is also planning to deliver emergency medicines through drones. The service, expected to be launched in early 2020, will be operated by California-based automated logistics firm Zipline.

Announcing the partnership with Zipline, the world’s first and only national-scale drone delivery service, the state government said the initiative will be supported through a grant from Serum Institute of India (SII), a leading vaccine manufacturer.

An autonomous delivery drone-based logistics network will be established by Zipline. A total of 10 distribution centres are planned across Maharashtra in phases over the next few years. The new initiative is a part of the state government’s vision of using drone delivery to establish universal seven-days-a-week access to lifesaving and critical medicines which will reach to its 120 million citizens over the coming years.

Zipline drones will make on-demand and emergency deliveries of blood products, vaccines and life-saving medications. In the first phase, two distribution centres located near Pune and Nandurbar will be established to service public health facilities in those regions beginning in early 2020. The operations in Pune and Nandurbar will be financed through a grant from SII. Future distribution centres will be financed by the government of Maharashtra and other private and philanthropic partners, the state government statement here said.

To increase access and reduce medicial waste, key stock of blood products, vaccines and life-saving medications will be stored at distribution centres for just-in-time delivery. Health workers will place orders by text message or call and promptly receive their deliveries in 30 minutes on average.

“The drones both take off from and land at Zipline’s distribution centres, requiring no additional infrastructure or manpower at the clinics they serve.

They fly autonomously and can carry 1.8 kilos of cargo, cruising at 110 kilometres an hour, and have a round-trip range of 160 kilometres — even in high speed winds and rain,” the statement said.

Each of the two distribution centres in Maharashtra will cover a delivery area of more than 20,000 square km. They will collectively be capable of serving up to 20 million people. Deliveries are made from the sky, with the drone descending to a safe height above the ground and releasing a box of medicine by parachute to a designated spot at the health centres it serves.

“Maharashtra has one of the best healthcare systems in India. This new emergency service is a great solution to deliver vaccines, blood and other lifesaving products instantly when time is of essence. It will help ensure that millions of people in Maharashtra will always get the care they need,” said Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo said millions of people die every year across the world because they cannot get the medicine they need when they need it. “Instant drone delivery can help solve that problem,” he added. The Goldman Sachs, Sequoia Capital, Katalyst Ventures, Temasek, Toyota Tsusho Corporation, Stanford University backed firm’s goal is to serve 700 million people across the world in the next five years.

The firm’s operations started in October of 2016 to deliver blood to 21 hospitals in Rwanda. Since then, the service has expanded nationwide covering most of the country’s 12 million population by drone delivery of medical products at 450 facilities. In April 2019, Zipline partnered with the government of Ghana to launch the first of four distribution centres that will serve 2,000 health facilities and a population of 12 million people across the country.

SII’s CEO Adar Poonawalla felt that the initiative would create deeper impact and extend the immunisation cover in the state.Flying high

An autonomous delivery drone-based logistics network will be established
10 distribution centres to be set up in phases across Maharashtra over the next few years
Drones will make on-demand, emergency deliveries of vaccines, life-saving medications
In the 1st phase, 2 distribution centres located near Pune and Nandurbar will be established
The operations will be financed through a grant from Serum Institute of India

Sohini Das | Mumbai Last Updated at September 17, 2019 01:15 IST

Business Standard

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Telangana May Use Drones To Deliver Blood and Medicines

Telangana government will team up with the World Economic Forum and Apollo Hospitals foundation for the pilot project to test drone delivery.

Telangana may soon start using drones for medical puproses. (Representational)

NEW DELHI: In a bid to improve access to health care for communities across the state, the Telangana government has adopted a new framework to use drones for last-mile delivery.

Co-designed with the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Apollo Hospitals Group company Healthnet Global Ltd, it will become the foundation for the pilot project to test drone delivery, according to a release by the WEF.

“Adopting this framework brings Telangana one step closer to rolling out a system that could save lives. It outlines what challenges drones can solve, how to oversee operations and how to implement them. We are looking forward to the next steps of this project,” said Timothy Reuter, head of aerospace and drones, at the World Economic Forum.

The framework outlines the key factors in evaluating drone operations and the technical requirements for each use case. It will ensure that government services are used as efficiently as possible and will serve as the starting point for discussions with civil aviation authorities.

Telangana IT Minister K T Rama Rao said the state has been a pioneer in using technology for improving the lives of the citizens. “Using drones to deliver blood and other medical goods to people in remote and inaccessible areas is an exemplary project that demonstrates use of technology for the social good.”

Apollo Hospitals Group Joint Managing Director Sangita Reddy said, “We are happy working with the World Economic Forum and the Government of Telangana, as a clinical partner in this drones project, which I am sure is the next step in our journey of remote health care delivery.”

This framework is part of the Drones and Tomorrow’s Airspace Portfolio, run out of the World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution India.

Telangana | Press Trust of India | Updated: October 04, 2019 17:20 IST

by Taboola

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An update on the trees planted by drones

And it’s Good News!

These tree-planting drones are firing ‘seed missiles’ into the ground. Less than a year later, they’re already 20 inches tall.

10 drones can plant 400,000 trees in a day — enough to combat climate change in real

Technology is the single greatest contributor to climate change but it may also soon be used to offset the damage we’ve done to our planet since the Industrial Age began.

In September 2018, a project in Myanmar used drones to fire “seed missiles” into remote areas of the country where trees were not growing. Less than a year later, thousands of those seed missiles have sprouted into 20-inch mangrove saplings that could literally be a case study in how technology can be used to innovate our way out of the climate change crisis.

“We now have a case confirmed of what species we can plant and in what conditions,” Irina Fedorenko, co-founder of Biocarbon Engineering, told Fast Company. “We are now ready to scale up our planting and replicate this success.”

According to Fedoranko, just two operators could send out a mini-fleet of seed missile planting drones that could plant 400,000 trees a day — a number that quite possibly could make massive headway in combating the effects of manmade climate change.

The drones were designed by an ex-NASA engineer. And with a pressing need to reseed an area in Myanmar equal to the size of Rhode Island, the challenge is massive but suddenly within reach. Bremley Lyngdoh, founder and CEO of World Impact, says reseeding that area could theoretically house as many as 1 billion new trees.

“Obviously, planting a billion trees will take a long time without the help of drones,” Lyngdoh told Fast Company.

But they’ve now got a powerful new ally in their corner. For context, it took the Worldview Foundation 7 years to plant 6 million trees in Myanmar. Now, with the help of the drones, they hope to plant another 4 million before the end of 2019.

Myanmar is a great case study for the project. In addition to the available land for the drone project, the nation has been particularly hit by the early effects of climate change in recent years. Rising sea levels are having a measurable impact on the population. In addition to their ability to clear CO2 from the atmosphere, healthy trees can also help solidify the soil, which can reduce the kind of soil erosion that has been affecting local populations in Myanmar.

Going forward, technologies like seed-planting drones could help stem the tide of catastrophic climate change while our governments and societies work to change the habits of consumers and corporations that are driving the problem. Our endless hunger for new technology may be the driving force behind climate change and deforestation but it could also end up being the solution to a problem.

4/10/2019

Good Is

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Vodafone successfully trials dynamic drone no-fly zones

We have recently become the first company in the world to show how mobile technology can be used to prevent drones interfering with controlled/high security areas, crime scenes, major incidents and events in the future.

Drones are expected to boost the European economy as part of future digital societies, spending seven times more hours flying in the skies above our heads by 2050 than aircraft as they undertake deliveries, inspections and even act as short-range transport.

Like aircraft, drone flying will need to be carefully regulated to ensure that they are not flying where they shouldn’t.

In earlier trials in Germany using the Vodafone Radio Positioning System (RPS), the world’s first internet of things drone tracking and safety technology, we established that the mobile network can be used to track a drone’s position when it is flying beyond-line-of site as a secure – and harder to spoof or hack – alternative alongside GPS.

Since then there has, rightly, been a lot of focus on how to protect permanent no fly zones like airports from drone attacks following a number of incidents in the UK last Christmas.

Looking forward it will also be important that emergency services and other authorities are able to establish temporary, or dynamic, no fly zones, for example, to make sure that only police drones can fly around a major crime scene.

This is possible by establishing airspace geo-fences: a virtual barrier or perimeter in a real-world geographical area.

Geo-fencing can be used to ‘fence off’ a permanently restricted area, such as an airport or a prison, or a temporarily restricted area such as a festival.

Drones can also be ‘fenced in’ on a particular mission when they are inspecting power lines for example.

Many drones will have a memory of no fly zones but these tend to be drawn from offline static databases. With temporary geo-fences, an offline database is simply not good enough.

Authorities need the ability to tell drones already in flight that they must divert their course, for example, to avoid extreme weather conditions, which they can do through mobile communications.

In a recent trial, we were able to demonstrate that a geo-fence can be generated and erased dynamically, using RPS to identify when a drone has entered the area.

A team of Vodafone engineers based in London were able to create a geo-fence in Spain and could interact with any number of drones flying within the area.

All of the drones were connected to our mobile network by an inbuilt SIM card.

We believe that this will be an important part of making drones safe to use on long-distance flights as it will ensure that they are resilient to any hacking attempts and can communicate with trusted authorities using strong end-to-end encrypted over-the-air messages.

We created a fully automated three ring exclusion zone process for the trial:

when a drone entered the outer ring, both the drone operator and the no-fly zone manager received a warning about the incursion into restricted airspace;
if the drone carried on and entered the middle ring of the no-fly zone it was forced to hover in place; and
if the central no-fly zone was expanded out to the area that the drone was hovering over, a command was sent over the mobile network forcing it to land immediately.

It is easy to imagine this Vodafone technology in the future being used to ensure that police drones can safely search an area without the risk of crashing into other drones.

Any mobile operator will be able to adopt this technology because we have placed our RPS research and associated intellectual property in the public domain with no licensing fees for re-use in order to accelerate the pace of drone safety and geolocation innovation worldwide.

Our drone trials support the objectives of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which is currently developing new pan-European rules to regulate the operation of drones.

This technology could be available as soon as eight months after authorities implement rules for drone no-fly zones, allowing for a SIM card based approach, which would hasten an industry of drones flying beyond-visual-line-of-sight that could be worth €15 billion annually to the European economy by 2050, with over 100,000 new jobs created.

Guest post by Victor Fernandez, New Technologies and Innovation specialist, Vodafone Group and Eimantas Puscius, Discover Graduate, Vodafone Group

By RONAN LEONARD

JUNE 14, 2019

For Irish Tech News