Smart cities not far away - Successful First drone test flights for GOF 2.0  took off yesterday - 02 sept. in Estonia

UAM development - First drone test flights for the SESAR JU project Gulf of Finland 2.0 (GOF 2.0) took off in Estonia yesterday - 02nd September 2021 .

• The drone market is growing rapidly and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including air taxis, are the next step in future urban air mobility.

• The SESAR JU project Gulf of Finland 2.0 (GOF 2.0) focuses on the safe, secure, and sustainable integration of unmanned aerial vehicle and air taxi operations in urban airspace.

• After eight months of intense preparation work, the first wave of trials will start in Tartu, Estonia, on 2 September 2021 and continue in Finland, Poland, and Austria.

For Urban Air Mobility to become a transportation system it must be integrated with other transportation infrastructure, such as airports, harbours, train/bus terminals, as well as logistics centres. The ability of logistics drones to form a seamless transportation chain in and out of airports is therefore of utmost importance.

The first wave of trials focussed on testing and demonstrating automated parcel delivery drones operating at low level, unexpected Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) flights, drone surveillance flights in urban area, entry and exit of various scale drones in defined airspaces, cross-border operations in U-space corridors with mixed electrical vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL), and drone traffic without degrading safety and following air traffic rules.  

On this occasion, EHang Holdings Limited announced that its flagship passenger-grade AAV EHang 216 and Falcon logistics model have completed Beyond Visual Line of Sight (“BVLOS”) trial flights for airport transport and parcel delivery in Estonia under the European Union’s GOF 2.0 Integrated Urban Airspace Validation (“GOF 2.0”) project to demonstrate safe, autonomous and eco-friendly urban air mobility (“UAM”) and the integration of unmanned aerial vehicles and air taxis into manned operations with air traffic management (“ATM”) and U-space services.

• The Estonian Transport Administration issued a Special Permit to EHang for trial flights in designated Estonian airspace until the end of 2021.

The key lessons from these trials will be an important enabler for the further development of the drone market and will deliver the technical components (services, software, competencies, practices) required to cost-efficiently operate autonomous and semi-autonomous drones beyond visual line of sight in shared airspace.

• GOF 2.0 is managed by the SESAR Joint Undertaking in an effort to deliver solutions for U-space, the European Commission’s initiative on the safe and secure integration of drones in European airspace.

The EHang 216 is the first passenger-grade AAV to have conducted BVLOS trial flights in Estonian airspace. During the live trials, the EHang 216 performed a flight mission of passenger VIP transport scenario from the Tartu Airport to the Estonian Aviation Museum, no passenger onboard, to demonstrate the uses cases and scenarios of eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) intra-urban and peri-urban flights.

EHang Falcon logistics model also completed a flight mission of parcel delivery from the Tartu Airport to a cargo terminal at the Estonian Aviation Museum, to demonstrate the uses cases and scenarios of automated parcel delivery drones operating at low level.

These trial flights are among the first wave of trials in the two-year GOF 2.0 project, with the focus of entry to and exit from defined airspaces. The trials demonstrate how manned and unmanned aviation can enter and leave various types of airspace, such as controlled/uncontrolled airspace and U-space airspace.

About GOF 2.0

The GOF 2.0 Integrated Urban Airspace VLD (GOF 2.0) very large demonstration project will safely, securely, and sustainably demonstrate operational validity of serving combined UAS, eVTOL and manned operations in a unified, dense urban airspace using current ATM and U-space services and systems.

Both ATM and U-space communities depend extensively on the provision of timely, relevant, accurate and quality-assured digital information to collaborate and make informed decisions.

The demonstrations focus on validation of the GOF 2.0 architecture for highly automated real-time separation assurance in dense air space including precision weather and telecom networks for air-ground communication and will significantly contribute to understanding how the safe integration of UAM and other commercial drone operations into ATM Airspace without degrading safety, security or disrupting current airspace operations can be implemented.

The GOF 2.0 project is one of several projects managed by the SESAR Joint Undertaking that are dedicated to U-space, the European Commission’s initiative for the safe and secure integration of drones into the airspace.

This project has received funding from the SESAR Joint Undertaking under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101017689. For more information, please visit https://gof2.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/GOF2_Trials.pdf.