pop-up Unified Traffic management

"essentially the 'air traffic control' for drones"

Drones are increasingly being used by emergency services for a variety of purposes, whether it be for Search & Rescue (SAR), firefighting, law enforcement, traffic management, hazardous materials response and damage assessment following a natural disaster.

We're all becoming more familiar with the hardware. But one of the most important aspects of using drones in emergency situations is the software. And more specifically, the software providing the airspace picture.

One company which is making a name for itself within the Emergency Services is Altitude Angel. It's Drone Assist app has become almost the default app for recreational as well as professional drone operators when they're planning their drone flight or operation.

But Altitude Angel has more to offer than just a shiny app. It's at the forefront of UTM (unified traffic management) technology - essentially the 'air traffic control' for drones - and will play an integral part in enabling the use of drones by the emergency services in every conceivable scenario as the technology develops.

"Since the business was started nearly eight years ago, the goal has been to enable drones to fly safely and securely in any airspace," says Phil Binks, Altitude Angel's Head of Air Traffic Management. "We've always believed the technology we're enabling can change the world for the better in an infinite number of ways. And helping the emergency services has been a central theme in all we do."

And they've been true to their word. Back in 2019, Altitude Angel made a joint announcement with Inmarsat, a world leader in global mobile satellite communication, to say the companies has developed a 'Pop-Up UTM' capability with search and rescue teams in mind.

"It sounds clich'd," says Binks, 'but after a particularly long day a few of us called in to the local pub before heading home. We began discussing a story which had been recently shared in the office of pilots operating the fire planes and helicopters in California refusing fly because drones had been seen in the area. It later transpired the drones were being operated by the ground crews looking for fires so they could direct operations more effectively. The left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing.

"If the fire fighting team had access to a UTM platform, they could have given assurances to the crewed operations the drones reported were friendly and were operating at safe levels. They [the drones] could even have been grounded for minutes as the planes and helicopters came in before renewing operations. We knew we had the foundations for a service, but it would need some external help."

One of the issues facing Altitude Angel was the connectivity to the drone. In a disaster zone like a Californian wildfire, or more recently in Turkey and Syria, the ground infrastructure is destroyed, and with it the mobile connectivity needed to provide the drones real-time location.

Fortunately, around the same time Altitude Angel were speaking to Inmarsat about possibly working together. They just needed a project.

Inmarsat's strength was its satellite network which meant with the correct hardware on the drone, it could be tracked and monitored anywhere on the planet without the need for any ground-based connectivity.

The two companies set about building on Altitude Angel's GuardianUTM platform to jointly develop what would become the 'Pop-Up UTM' platform. Utilising Inmarsat's sector-leading global network of satellites and leveraging its substantial experience in Air Traffic Management (ATM) communications, it took a little under six months for the platform to be ready and accessed rapidly and deployed worldwide.

Then, during October and November 2020, Altitude Angel and Inmarsat brought in drone operator, A-TechSYN to test and prove the platform's capability. Over the two months A-TechSYN flew numerous BVLOS flights, connected and tracked using Inmarsat's global L-band satellite network. The fully autonomous flights were initiated and monitored by a pilot 60km from the take-off and landing area near Ankara, Turkey, and were tracked, monitored, and managed using the Pop-Up UTM platform by a team at Altitude Angel's HQ in Reading, United Kingdom. The test flights produced excellent results, with the UTM platform offering full situational awareness to the operator team. During the tests, the system detected a possible conflict with a commercial aircraft - which could have been a blue-light helicopter in a real-world scenario. As designed, the Pop-Up UTM correctly triggered a warning to de-conflict the two aircraft, allowing appropriate avoidance action to be taken.

"Drones have become an essential tool in SAR for all the obvious reasons; they're quick to deploy, can stay aloft for a good length of time and they're cost effective," says Binks. "But they're only useful when they're flying! If you can't get them in the air because crewed aviation are operating near by or in the same airspace, all the benefits are lost. Which is why UTM will play a crucial part in blue-light drone operations going forward. It's about bringing all technology together, so we have the complete picture. Drones can help find victims or missing persons, but helicopters may be called in to get them out. Having the complete airspace picture makes this possible."