Flying High Urban Drones Prize

The problem

Drone technology has come on in leaps and bounds. Now a familiar sight, they are used by the military, civilian operators and hobbyists. Their potential use in complex urban settings and remote or robotic operation over long distances are key to unlocking some of the most exciting use cases. But they also face serious technological and regulatory barriers.

The Flying High Urban Drones Prize will accelerate development towards three of these use casesmedical delivery, emergency response and infrastructure development and maintenance.

Innovators will develop the technology and services to safely deliver these socially beneficial services in the most complex and harsh environments: modern cities. The prize will not just accelerate development of these tech and service offerings, but also inform the evolution of regulation of this emerging field of technology.

Why a challenge prize?

Innovation in the drone world is moving fast, but creating new applications that work in cities - where safety is paramount and regulation is most complex - is slower.This is a shame, because cities and people see the potential benefits that drones can bring - in delivering socially beneficial public services that make us safer and more prosperous. The Flying High Urban Drones Prize will set drone entrepreneurs, including from the UK’s thriving UAV sector, the challenge of safely developing demonstrations of these services, as a way of accelerating their adoption.

Innovate UK’s Future Flight Challenge has already directed public funds towards the development of future aviation technology and services in general, and drones in particular. But Flying High is different in that it sets specific objectives - defining three key use cases that have been identified and developed in consultation with city stakeholders around the UK - and setting entrepreneurs the challenge of delivering them.

Challenge Works’ research into the opportunities and pitfalls of the drone industry identified that consortia delivering these cutting-edge services would very likely need to have three key players involved, which do not always work together The challenge prize will incentivise them to do so.

These are:

● Technical: providing the drone technology and service.

● End user: a customer which is interested in piloting the service at the end of the challenge, and who will help to co-develop the service with the technical partner

● Local authority: a city which endorses the application, will convene civic engagement activities around the use case and the industry in general, and could host a trial, demonstration or pilot at the end of the challenge.

How can we combine commercial viability publicly beneficial urban drone services?

A£1 million prizes for safe commercially viable drone services that benefit the public in urban settings