An amazing showcase: Altitude Angel helps bring GOF trials to a successful conclusion

London, UK: Altitude Angel, the world’s leading unmanned traffic solutions technology provider, has completed its involvement in the SESAR Joint Undertaking GOF U-SPACE project, declaring the trials to have been a ‘huge success’ and an ‘amazing showcase’ of its UTM technologies. 

The project’s demonstration phase has ended after several advanced drone operational scenarios took place across Estonia and Finland throughout July and August.  The demonstrations, which showcased the most ‘attractive use cases’, involved both manned and unmanned aircraft in shared airspace, relying on systems such as Altitude Angel’s GuardianUTM O/S to remain safe. 

Altitude Angel was a key UTM (unmanned traffic management) partner for the trials, providing services which included integration to the FIMS (flight information management system) for the transport of flight plans, telemetry/position reports, AIM (geofencing/volume reservations), as well as alerts and registration data to-and-from the drone operators and manned aviation which were involved in the trials.  

Simon Wynn-Mackenzie, Altitude Angel, Head of Products said: “We’ve been working with the SESAR team for over a year on this project.  It’s been a great few months in Finland and Estonia supporting the live demonstrations which have been huge success and an amazing showcase of our world leading UTM technologies. 

“Not only did the scenarios give us another opportunity to demonstrate our production UTM platform in another real-life environment, they went a long way to showing the public how drones can be used in a positive and socially beneficial way on a daily basis.” 

Wynn-Mackenzie added: “Our only disappointment was that we were not able to demonstrate our world-first Conflict Resolution Service which we unveiled in July, as the trial scenarios had already been agreed. However, we’ll be looking to showcase our constantly evolving platform and several new services very soon.” 

Altitude Angel was able to demonstrate its unified traffic management platform across a number of scenarios which varied in scope and range, and included: urban drone fleet operations with police intervention, long-distance multisensory inspection flights over forests, urban drone operations in controlled airspace, powerline inspection in rural areas, maritime search and rescue, and international parcel delivery. 

The demonstration series concluded today with an urban Volocopter air taxi flight around the Vantaa International Airport, Helsinki. 

The GOF trials were not the first demonstrations Altitude Angel has been involved in. In November 2018 it led the team behind Operation Zenith, which gave a view of the future of air traffic management and drone integration into busy, complex airspace, demonstrating how by using the right technology, it’s possible to safely integrate unmanned traffic into controlled airspace and open the skies to commercial airspace worldwide. 

Altitude Angel’s core GuardianUTM O/S system is already helping drones to operate in controlled airspace as it powers the UK’s national UTM system, operated by NATS, the UK’s main air navigation service provider. 

Altitude Angel works with drone manufacturers, air navigation service providers (ANSPs, the organisations and public bodies which manage controlled airspace) as well as businesses and organisations which manage large infrastructures across numerous industries, to provide solutions which will allow the safe integration of automated drones into airspace.  

Through its Airspace Management platform, GuardianUTM O/S, they deliver the essential software platform which enable national deployments of U-Space compatible services, safely unlocking the potential of drones and helping national aviation authorities and ANSPs to establish new services to support growth in the drone industry.   

About Altitude Angel:  

Altitude Angel is an award-winning provider of UTM (Unified Traffic Management) software, enabling those planning to operate, or develop UTM/U-Space solutions, to quickly integrate robust data and services with minimum effort. 

From a consistent, well-documented and standards-based platform, drone manufacturers such as DJI and cutting-edge software developers around the world use our Developer Platform to obtain rich, relevant, and local geofencing data, exchange and share flight plans, de-conflict their own flights in real-time and interface with national flight authorisation systems. A growing portfolio of enhanced capabilities help our customers to comply with current and future regulations and interface with changing national systems with only minimal effort. 

Altitude Angel’s first party solutions also power some of the world’s leading ANSPs, aviation authorities and Enterprises, including LVNL (Netherlands) and Avinor (Norway), empowering them with new capabilities to safely manage and integrate drone traffic into national operations. 

Today, Altitude Angel’s market-defining technology is providing a critical, enabling service on which the future of UTM, especially in controlled airspace, will be built across the globe.  

By unlocking the potential of drones and helping national aviation authorities, ANSPs, developers and enterprise organisations, Altitude Angel is establishing new services to support the growth in the drone industry.  

Altitude Angel was founded by Richard Parker in 2014 and is headquartered in Reading, UK.   

Altitude Angel’s developer platform is open and available to all at https://developers.altitudeangel.com 

About GuardianUTM:  

GuardianUTM enables drone manufacturers and software developers to connect into a rich, dynamic source of accurate, authoritative, and relevant information to support geofencing, while offering enhanced UTM capabilities such as a single interface to multi-country flight authorisation.  

Its companion product, GuardianUTM O/S, supports all the functionality required to deliver national-grade drone traffic management capabilities to any country that wishes to safely unlock the potential of drones.  

Introduction video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0pvUrS07g  

The GOF USPACE project, with a broad consortium of 19 members, demonstrates Europe is on course with its implementation of U-space, an initiative which aims to ensure safe and secure drone traffic management, taking into account the rapid growth in the use of drones. The GOF concept enables shared situational awareness for all aviation stakeholders. The success of the project is based on deep Air Traffic Management (ATM) experience of all consortium members, including three world-leading UTM (Unmanned Traffic Management) technology vendors and two Air Navigation Services Providers, developing interoperability and data-sharing solutions which are aligned with SESAR’s overall U-space architecture.  

The U-Space project has received funding from the SESAR Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Connection Europe Facility (CEF) programme under grant agreement SJU/LC/343-CTR.