With the advent of remotely piloted aircraft and unmanned aerial systems, one of the challenges facing the aerospace community is how to safely and securely integrate these vehicles into controlled civilian airspace i.e. in the presence of (conventional) manned aircraft.
This was one of the key objectives of the RAID (RPAS-ATM Integration Demonstration) project. RAID is a European research project co-financed by the SESAR Joint Undertaking (JU) and is a joint collaboration between seven Italian and Maltese partners from industry and academia, including CIRA (the Italian national aerospace centre), Malta Air Traffic Services Ltd and the Institute of Aerospace Technologies at the University of Malta.
The objectives of the RAID project were met successfully through the execution of a number of real-time simulation exercises and, more significantly, through a flight test campaign. The flight test campaign was carried out in Capua (Italy) in May and consisted of a total of 12 flights with the aim of evaluating various RPAS aspects, including procedures, detect and avoid technologies, and the impact of RPAS operations on remote pilots and air traffic controllers. The main aircraft that was used in the campaign is the FLARE (CIRA's Flying Lab for Experimental Research) - a TECNAM P92-Echo aircraft which was modified by CIRA to allow it to be flown by a remote pilot on the ground. Over the past months, Prof. Ing. David Zammit Mangion and Dr Jason Gauci from the Institute of Aerospace Technologies worked closely with the other project partners on the planning, execution and results analysis of the flight test campaign.
The RAID project has now formally ended and the project results and recommendations will be presented to the SESAR JU and the wider RPAS community. More information about the project can be obtained from the project website.