When moving people by air, particularly with unmanned aircraft like the future taxi drones, a navigation failure is not an option. The recently started EU-funded research and development project DELOREAN aims at developing the navigation and positioning requirements for the future urban air mobility and urban air delivery missions.

Castelldefels, 3 February 2020. The urban air mobility (UAM) and urban air delivery (UAD) project DELOREAN, coordinated by the Spanish company Pildo Consulting S.L. –a.k.a. Pildo Labs– had its kick-off meeting on 31 January 2020 at the European GNSS Agency (GSA) premises located in the Spanish Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Espacial (INTA). The research and innovation project, funded by the European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 (H2020) programme and managed by the GSA, aims at the identification of the navigation and positioning requirements for the challenging future UAM and UAD services, and to demonstrate how the European GNSS stands as an enabler of UAM and UAD.

The project HYCOS, coordinated by GEOSAT and GeoNumerics, was pitched at the G7 Summit held in Biarritz on 24th August 2019, highlighting the benefits of the tandem air-ground 3D mapping concept for coastal erosion monitoring.

Castelldefels, 28 August 2019. Cédrik Ferrero, GEOSAT’s CEO, presented the project HYCOS on coastal foredune erosion monitoring at the opening of the G7 Summit held in Biarritz, on the 24th August 2019. The presentation, which took place before the opening speech by President Emmanuel Macron, followed an invitation of the “Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine” and the “Communauté d’Agglomération Pays Basque” after the successful completion of HYCOS.

Ismael Colomina, GeoNumerics’ CEO, presented “MapKITE: a tandem drone and terrestrial corridor mapping system and method” at the 57th Photogrammetric Week, held at the University of Stuttgart (Stuttgart, Germany) from 9 to 13 September 2019.

Castelldefels, 17 September 2019. On 10 September 2019, in Stuttgart, the mapKITE technology and method was presented by Ismael Colomina, GeoNumerics’ CEO, to the participants of the biennial “Photogrammetric Week” technical meeting –the PhoWo. The presentation, co-authored by Pere Molina and Marta Blázquez, followed an invitation of the PhoWo organisers.

The mobile tandem drone-aerial/terrestrial mapKITE geodata acquisition and data processing method was presented before an international audience of more than 250 participants. In the presentation, the mapKITE acquisition concept, the processing strategy and results from controlled tests in a Brazilian motorway and in the Atlantic French coast were discussed. Recent results on the use of mapKITE in urban and natural GNSS-unfriendly canyons obtained with the dynamic network adjustment technique were also presented.

The presentation took place on 13 March 2019 in the frame of the World Air Traffic Management (ATM) congress, held in Madrid, Spain. More specifically, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) hosted a session related to the European GNSS opportunities in aviation, and the analysis of EGNOS and Galileo benefits for drones was conducted by GeoNumerics.

Castelldefels, 25 March 2019. As experts in positioning and navigation technology, and also due to their expertise in the drone field, GeoNumerics was invited to present an analysis of the contributions of European GNSS systems, namely EGNOS and Galileo, for safe navigation for drones. This matter is of recent and high interest, specially leveraged by the upcoming integration of drones in the traffic management concept in Europe, the so-called U-Space.