UK announces trials designed to make drones an ‘everyday reality’

Drones are only really useful if they can operate semi-autonomously, flying beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) of their operator. The aim of these trials is ultimately to establish the technologies and rules required to allow UK skies to host swarms of these things without crashing into each other or anything else they share airspace with.

The six projects chosen for these trials are as follows:

Of these the Amazon one is likely to eventually contribute the most to drone numbers, The SATE one is the most ambitious, which features self-flying cargo aircraft (pictured) and even passenger drone flights. The most ominous, of course, is the policing angle, evoking as it does a Robocop-like autonomous law-enforcement future.

“These innovative trials mark a significant step forward in integrating drones safely into UK airspace,” said Sophie O’Sullivan, Director of Future of Flight at the UK Civil Aviation Authority. “By supporting projects ranging from consumer deliveries to critical infrastructure inspections, we are gathering essential data to shape future policies and regulations.

“Our goal is to make drone operations beyond visual line of sight a safe and everyday reality, contributing to the modernisation of UK airspace and the incorporation of new technology into our skies.”

“These have the potential to transform how we deliver goods and provide services, particularly in less well-connected regions,” said Simon Masters, Future Flight Challenge Deputy Director at UK Research and Innovation. “These new sandbox projects are a great step towards realising these ambitions.”

The release defines the concept of a sandbox in this context is ‘to strike a balance between promoting innovation and ensuring safety and regulatory compliance within the aviation sector.’ That makes sense and, since the drone genie is very much out of the bottle, it’s good to see the UK being proactive about exploring this massive opportunity.

While it will probably take a long time to resolve the many challenges associated with an explosion in BVLOS done use, it could ultimately provide one of those major 5G novel use cases the telecoms industry has been craving for the past few years. A new set of B2B tariffs charged to drone operators would represent a significant new revenue stream for UK operators but would also presumably require far more extensive 5G coverage than they currently provide.