ENAIRE and Partners Showcase Advanced U-space Services at SPATIO Open Day

The SPATIO project Open Day took place in A Coruña, Spain, where ENAIRE joined a coalition of partners to demonstrate a series of innovative solutions for the safe and efficient management of drone traffic in European airspace under real operational conditions.

About the SPATIO Project

According to ENAIRE, "SPATIO is led by CRIDA, ENAIRE's R&D subsidiary, and is a three-year strategic project (2023–2026) under SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking, aimed at developing advanced U-space services to support the safe integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into European airspace."

Addressing Core Drone Management Challenges

ENAIRE noted that SPATIO directly addresses one of aviation's defining challenges: how to safely manage a growing number of drones in complex and dynamic environments. To that end, the project has developed and validated several advanced services:

• UAS Separation Management: Combines pre-flight planning with real-time control to prevent conflicts between drones.
• Noise Impact Assessment and Mitigation: Identifies and reduces drone noise impacts to keep noise levels within publicly acceptable thresholds.
• Ground Safety Risk Management: Identifies locations above densely populated areas where the risk of an incident is higher, and sets maximum aircraft density limits over those zones to protect people on the ground.

The project brings together more than 20 European partners working to advance the U-space airspace model toward supporting high-density operations, and contributing to the development of the European Digital Sky.

Open Day Demonstrations

The Open Day was held at the experimental facilities of technology centre ITG, where attendees engaged with project outcomes through technical briefings and live demonstrations throughout the day. ENAIRE, CRIDA, and INECO subsequently conducted a joint live demonstration of these capabilities in a multi-U-space Service Provider (USSP) environment.

Madrid Loring Aerodrome Validation Milestone

ENAIRE highlighted that "one of the project's most significant milestones was the successful validation of tactical separation in a real operational environment at Loring aerodrome in Madrid, completed this past March."

The validation exercise was organised by Indra together with ENAIRE, CRIDA, INECO, and other consortium partners. It tested the capabilities under complex operational scenarios, including the simultaneous management of multiple drone flight missions in an environment with several co-existing USSPs.

The developed system is capable of analysing planned aircraft trajectories and predicting potential conflicts between drones in real time. It automatically triggers alerts when minimum separation standards are about to be breached and provides automated operational solutions. These instructions are delivered directly to each pilot's control interface through a dedicated software interface developed specifically for pilots by INECO as part of the project.

Project Funding

The SPATIO project is funded by the European Union through the SESAR programme under Grant Agreement No. 101114674, with a total funding amount of €7 million.

原文來源： 查看原文