The United Kingdom’s commercial drone industry, valued at £501 million in 2023, stands at a pivotal juncture. In this paper by Connected Places Catapult “Beyond Sight Behind Barriers”, the authors examine the current state of the UK Drone Industry and what might be holding it back from the next steps of growth. Despite its rapid growth and the nation’s rich aviation heritage, the sector faces significant challenges due to regulatory uncertainties, particularly concerning Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations. This ambiguity deters investment and hampers the integration of drones into the existing airspace framework. To harness the full economic potential and position the UK as a global leader in drone technology, immediate and decisive action is imperative. Establishing a dedicated task force with clear accountability, government representation, and targeted funding is essential to revitalize momentum and address existing regulatory gaps. Without such measures, the UK risks forfeiting substantial economic opportunities and ceding its competitive edge in the burgeoning global drone market.
This paper explores how the UK’s drone market design and regulation approach is missing key pieces of the puzzle: the current approach relies on many actors attempting to piece together the jigsaw without being able to visualise the final image displayed on the box. New leadership is desperately needed to reset the approach and configure a successful market, which the regulations can then support.
The paper measures the UK Drone Industry against other economic areas employing drones, examines drone traffic management technologies and focuses on the Skyway Case Study, before making concluding recommendations.
Project Skyway is part of Phase 3 of Innovate UK’s Future Flight Challenge Programme, exploring a drone superhighway for BVLOS flights.
Connected Places Catapult‘s role was to engage with various stakeholders to understand perceptions, expectations, and concerns about drones and BVLOS usage. Stakeholders see benefits like promoting UK innovation and enhancing sustainability but have concerns about the superhighway’s resilience and logistics.
Industry Perceptions: Industry stakeholders see potential benefits in sustainability, time-saving, and safety but have concerns about regulations, system resilience, and operational complexity
Report recommendations: The report concludes with recommendations on emphasizing transparent communication, independent regulation, and comprehensive risk mitigation to ensure successful implementation and public acceptance.
CPC: Intelligent Drones Revolutionise Infrastructure Inspections: A Market Report
As part of the Future of Flight Phase III Challenge, the Intelligent Drones for Ports and Highways (InDePTH) consortium envisions a future where the deployment of intelligent drones may be used to support a wide range of inspection and maintenance tasks around national critical infrastructures.
Currently, large-scale inspections of critical national infrastructure hold many high-risk challenges for port operators and highway maintenance teams due to a wide range of factors resulting in inefficient processes.
To address this, Connected Places Catapult sought to capture and understand the end user requirements in a real working environment to provide support by reviewing the current and potential use of intelligent drones around critical infrastructures in a more safe, efficient, and seamless manner.
The consortium is made up of Associated British Ports, BT Group, Kier, Herotech8 and Robok. BT Group and Herotech8 are ARPAS-UK Members.
24 May 2024
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£1.3m for Freight Innovators Selected for Trials with Industry Heavyweights
From new cargo drones to upcycling freight trains, the latest firms selected for the Freight Innovation Fund Accelerator have been unveiled.
Ten small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) will each receive a share of £1.3m to conduct technology trials with industry partners. The SMEs will also benefit from trial and business support tailored to their needs as part of the programme. This includes trial design training, monitoring and evaluation, investment readiness, pitch coaching, marketing support, and business modelling.
The Freight Innovation Fund is backed by the Department for Transport (DfT) and delivered by Connected Places Catapult. The Fund was launched in January 2023 to help SMEs develop greener and more efficient solutions for freight. The first round of winning projects on the Accelerator was announced in April 2023.
“Our freight sector is growing at pace and has the potential to support jobs and economic growth in every region of the UK.
“Transforming freight also provides opportunities to unlock efficiency savings for businesses and drive down carbon emissions. I’m pleased to welcome this exciting group of innovators to the Freight Innovation Fund Accelerator.”
Erika Lewis, Chief Executive at Connected Places Catapult
Speaking at the Microlise Transport Conference last week, Minister for Roads and Local Transport, Guy Opperman MP, announced that a new group of SMEs have been selected. Meet the accelerators’ Second Cohort :
Ai Automation
Ensemble Analytics Ltd
Flexible Power Systems
Go Rolloe Ltd
Hubl Logistics Ltd
Inteliports: Inteliports has developed a solution that can seamlessly integrate drones into communities, providing the quickest and most affordable instant delivery service in the market. In partnership with Vodafone, they aim to demonstrate that drone deliveries are a viable option and can be implemented on a large scale using autonomous hardware and the latest blockchain technology.
IONA: IONA is testing its novel tilt-rotor cargo drone that logistics providers can use instead of delivery vans and oversized vehicles in the last-mile delivery space. As part of the Freight Innovation Fund Accelerator programme, IONA is partnering with Eagle Couriers in Scotland to validate a technical proof of concept. IONA’s trial involves testing the drone’s ability to carry cargo and preparing the necessary documents for certification.
Meteor Power Limited
Sorair Technologies
Zugbox Ltd
The Freight Innovation Fund programme also features the Freight Innovation Cluster, launched last year, which has already grown to a network of over 320 businesses. The Cluster connects industry, innovators, and investors looking to explore joint opportunities and progress disruptive technologies in freight.
Are you looking to bring your agriculture technology to the market? A policy maker looking to make change within the agriculture industry? Or simply interested in how drones can automate processes across different sectors?
Current uses for drones in agriculture include surveying and mapping, crop health monitoring and disease detection.
Automated disease detection, spraying and automated drones that are housed on-farm are expected to become feasible services over the next decade.
So how do we make this happen? Join Agri-EPI in collaboration with Connected Places Catapult as part of their Drone Pathfinder Programme, where we explore the use of drone technology in precision spraying.
We will be having a series of presentations, a live Q&A followed by a networking session.
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Driving productivity using drones in the Housing Sector
Connected Places Catapult (CPC) and Disruptive Innovators Network (DIN) are co-hosting a webinar on 29th June 2021.
The objective of this webinar is to help understand the impact of drones to deliver cost savings, drive productivity, enhance the data available on building assets and improve services to tenants and leaseholders.
The webinar will benefit organisations that manage housing assets including Housing Providers, ALMOs, Local Authorities and any other organisations that are looking to increase efficiency and safety through using drones and new methods of working towards preventative rather than reactive maintenance and delivery of Net Zero.
The objective of the webinar is to:
Provide an understanding on how drone technology can benefit the housing sector
Share outcomes from drone demonstrations hosted by Yorkshire Housing including the opportunities and benefits that can be achieved from using drones
Provide next steps on how your organisation can adopt drone technology
The agenda will include:
Housing Provider’s perspective
Yorkshire Housing demonstration of building condition surveys
Solutions available today including 2D orthomosaic, 3D modelling, thermal imaging, and the benefits of changing the current processes
How to implement drone technology and how your organisation can get involved
Open Q&A session
CPC will also share an update on the industry engagement activity as part of the Government Drone Pathfinder Catalyst Programme, sponsored by the Department for Transport. The Pathfinder Catalyst Programme aims to boost the development and use of drones across the UK economy, with the support from industry and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
The UK Government Drones Pathfinder Programme announces the addition of a new Pathfinder project
Airspace Integration of Drones in support of COVID response Pathfinder aims to deliver an operating environment where all airspace users are detected, and their locations presented back to other drone operators. This will enable drones to safely “detect and avoid” other drones and air users.
The project will be delivered by Trax International in partnership with UAvionix, ANRA Technologies UK and Plane Finder. Initial trials will take place at The Aviation Innovation Centre, Goodwood and will also include Skyports and Auriga Aerospace. The project is partly funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and is expected to be completed by November 2021.
Working under the Civil Aviation Authority’s regulatory requirements, the consortium aims to demonstrate safe Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone flight alongside conventional air traffic in non-segregated airspace.
This will be achieved by developing a comprehensive electronic surveillance picture based on Mode-S and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) transmissions using existing internationally recognised systems, procedures and rules, and integrating it into an unmanned traffic management (UTM) platform. This information will be re-broadcast via Traffic Information Service – Broadcast (TIS-B) to enhance the situational awareness of all airspace users.
Transport Minister Rachael Maclean said:
“The UK is already a world-leader when it comes to innovation in aviation and this exciting project will take us one step further to being able to safely use drones alongside other air traffic in UK airspace.
“This trial is supported by our Drones Pathfinder Programme which we are pleased to be funding into 2021/22.”
Trax International will be providing an overview of the project at the Government Drones Pathfinder Community Webinar on 31st March. You can register for the event HERE. These community events provide an opportunity for the Drones community to share experiences and form networking connections.
The UK Government Drones Pathfinder programme is sponsored by the Department for Transport (DfT) and aims to rapidly drive progress in unmanned aviation technology and regulation, enabling industry and the public sector to fully exploit the market in different industry sectors.
Pathfinder projects take a phased approach to achieve routine use of drones within the UK and focus on identifying and overcoming the technical, operational, and commercial challenges for bringing a new BVLOS drone-based service to market in the UK.
Research project to open pathway to commercial drone operations the UK
A ground-breaking new project announced today (30th July) will build and then demonstrate how Open-Access UTM (Unmanned Traffic Management) capability can support drone operations below 400ft.
The Connected Places Catapult is bringing together a national and international consortium to develop a world leading Open-Access UTM framework for drones. The project, commissioned by the Department for Transport, will continue laying the groundwork for a safe flying environment for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) operations in the UK, enabling efficient sharing of airspace with manned aircraft and Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations of drones.
There is a huge global opportunity for countries that can successfully accommodate commercial drone operations, it’s thought the sector could be worth £127bn globally. UTM is recognised as a key enabler to address the safe and efficient integration of unmanned vehicles into the airspace and Connected Places Catapult in collaboration with AiRXOS (part of GE Aviation), Altitude Angel, ANRA Technologies, Collins Aerospace and Wing will work towards the first set of the safe and regulated UTM capabilities this year.
This research and development project will create principal architectural features, communications interfaces and key services that will be evaluated through simulations before progressing to field-trials. The trial will build on existing platforms and standards to create a developmental system to explore UTM and drone operations, as well as identifying the next research steps and facilitating knowledge transfer to government and industry.
Dr. Ajay Modha, Principal Technologist at the Connected Places Catapult, said:
“This is an exciting opportunity to demonstrate a UK-specific UTM ecosystem and represents a key step in lowering the technology and operational barriers for UAS operations. A key objective is to demonstrate how this capability can support near term and future markets needs and ambitions. As Phase 2 of the Future Flight Challenge kicks-off, a key aim of this project is to provide greater insight and actionable data to the UAS community who may be tackling UTM for the first time”.
Ted Lester, Chief Technologist, AiRXOS said:
“After participating in the successful 2019-2020 effort with Connected Places Catapult to develop a framework for UTM in the UK, AiRXOS looks forward to demonstrating with peer UTM service providers safe, efficient, and economical UAS airspace integration to accelerate the beneficial use of UAS in the UK and around the world.”
On being chosen to take part in the Connected Places Catapult project, Richard Ellis, Altitude Angel, Chief Business Officer said:
“We are delighted to continue to work with CPC to continue validation of the Open UTM framework we pioneered in 2019. The live trials will benefit significantly from Altitude Angel’s existing extensive API’s and experience of providing production services across the world. We believe this will form a solid foundation for the UK to establish repeatable and scalable drone operations.”
Amit Ganjoo, CEO and Founder of ANRA Technologies UK Pvt Limited said
“The UK is rapidly becoming a global leader in advancing commercial drone technologies. We are honoured to have contributed to all Connected Places Catapult Open-Access UTM Research and Development Programmes and are excited to commence live-flight testing in pursuit of a safe, interoperable, and efficient traffic management system,”
Sean Camilleri, Principal Strategic Development Manager at Collins Aerospace said:
“This ground-breaking program gives us the opportunity to test out the most prominent emerging standards and theories of UAS traffic management and put them to the test in collaboration with our peers. Successful trials will enable us to move another step closer to unlocking the full social and economic benefits of beyond visual line of sight drone operations in the UK”.
James Ryan Burgess, CEO at Wing said:
“Drones and the services they provide present significant benefits to the United Kingdom, supporting emergency response, reducing emissions and air pollution and increasing access to food, medicine and other goods. We’re pleased to be joining the Catapult project to advance the safe and open use of the airspace and look forward to bringing our global experience to enable a scalable and low cost UTM architecture that can support the volume and diversity of unmanned aviation.”
Note to Editors
This project will build on the UTM and Government Drone Pathfinder activity that Connected Places Catapult has published previously:
Future Flight is one of several challenge areas set-out by the UK government’s Industrial Strategy which is a long-term plan to raise the productivity and earning power in the UK. The Future Flight programme is funded by £125 million from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund which is expected to be matched by up to £175 million from industry. The challenge will cover four areas of activity:
Control and regulations including air traffic management
New operating models
Ground infrastructure
Integrating new aircraft with a new aviation system
This challenge aims to revolutionise the way people, goods and services fly and position the UK as a world leader in aviation products and markets worth over $675 billion (£559bn) to 2050.
It will support the development, in the UK, of new technologies from freight-carrying drones
to urban air vehicles to hybrid-electric regional aircraft. These new modes of travel will
increase mobility, reduce road congestion, improve connectivity, increase UK manufacturing
opportunities and help aviation to reduce its environmental impact around the world.
Connected Places Catapult manages the Drones Pathfinder Programme in partnership with the Department of Transport (DfT) and supported by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). https://cp.catapult.org.uk/pathfinder/
