44 For example, emergency services may need to restrict UAV access to a geographic area due to a crewed helicopter conducting an emergency flight landing to pick up an accident victim. Public services will be able to extract historical data regarding the UAVs, such as flight-path telemetry, in the case of investigating a mishap. The deployment of these functions can vary significantly and each of the features can be centralised or federated, with UTM systems linking together. For example, avoiding conflicts between aircraft in a federated architecture is more complex because the deconfliction algorithms must be universally standardised and adopted by the operators. This is similar to a problem that industry has already encountered for TCAS/ACAS avionics in commercial aviation. The most effective UTM systems use a blended architecture with elements of centralised and federated capabilities. This requires FIMS to play a central role in arbitrating air traffic management for crewed and, in some cases, uncrewed traffic in a mixed-use airspace when necessary, and it acts as the authorised single point of reference for critical, crewed air traffic information. A blended model provides several advantages in terms of clearly assigning and controlling the safety-critical airspacemanagement functions in an unambiguous and efficient manner, thus reducing the need for complex information exchange requirements across UAV operators. Projects to develop DSS for UTM systems are taking place in the UK, Switzerland, the US and across Europe. The DSS acts like a phone book to add UAV operators. An operator with a flight plan with a route can automatically check the DSS to get the all-clear to fly. If there is a conflict, the UAV is told to return to the operator, or dynamic rerouting is used to offer another route. The gates are designed to ensure service providers can pass all protocols, ensuring conformance monitoring for flying the intended route, as well as setting up live flights, with the telemetry from the drones going into the network. This also accepts the upload of the mission plan and ‘deconflicts’ any clashes in real time when the UAVs are in flight, while providing notifications to nearby users. This is being tested in simulations to ensure compliance, but it also needs automated bench-testing for the UTM system as every firmware change cannot take additional test time. So, a UTM developer works with the regulator to approve an automated test bench that can automatically test updates to the system. The governance that was created to ensure participants conform to the regulations allows the monitoring of uptime, aggregate conformance. This is the first time this has been done, and it sets a template for other areas and for the next UAV rules being developed. Airspace management is expected to be included for BVLOS to make that management more routine, including architectures for communicating with each other through de-confliction. August/September 2024 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Co-ordinating UTM systems via FIMS (Image courtesy of ANRA Technologies) Key elements of a UTM (Image courtesy of ANRA Technologies)
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