Obtain flight mission readiness, enabling rapid intervention for healthcare and critical infrastructure, leveraging all value chain actors and U-Space services.

SAFIR-Ready aims to develop new U-Space services relevant for U3 and U4, that, together with a central Command and Control Center (C2C) and the development of an automated ground integration (Drone Cargo Port - DCP) will allow for automated time critical drone based services for medical and non-medical use cases.

To achieve this, the consortium will focus on the development of a ‘Dynamic Capacity Management System’ (U3), ‘Detect And Avoid algorithms’ (U3) and ‘Machine To Machine communication and decision making’ (U4). The medical use cases have already been demonstrated in the predecessor project of SAFIR-Ready, SAFIR-Med.

These use cases consist of (urgent) transport between of from hospital rooftops for clinical samples, blood products, medicines, and AED’s.

The SAFIR-Ready project will extend these use cases with non-medical critical missions: Inspection flights for railways and electrical grids.

These flights can be planned (e.g. routine inspections of infrastructure) but can also be time critical in case of unforeseen issues with the infrastructure (e.g. tree fallen on high tension cable). Shore to Ship for transport of materials, inspector, or pilotage passenger.

The consortium will demonstrate the new U-Space services in executing the aforementioned use cases in three different regions: Antwerp (BE), Tartu (EE) and Flushing (NL) In parallel research will be done around social acceptance, privacy protection and environmental impact.

The Figure below shows how one base set up, consisting of the Helicus Command and Control Center, a drone agnostic Drone Cargo Port and various UAV-types cover a various set of uses cases.