Approaching the future urban sky with the DELOREAN Project
The DELOREAN project, which stands for Drones and EGNSS for low airspace urban mobility, keeps progressing with the real urban scenarios definition within Benidorm city.
The DELOREAN project was awarded by the GSA within the framework program “EGNOS Adoption in Aviation” and its main objective is to develop innovative EGNOS based solutions that respond to the increased mobility needs of people and goods, enabling efficient, sustainable, affordable and effective air services in challenging urban scenarios.
The two main pillars of research, development and operational implementation of the project are UAM (Urban Air Mobility) and UAD (Urban Air Delivery). The project intents to demonstrate the benefits that both air services would bring to our present-day society and the future city sky by providing solutions and real alternatives to traffic congestion and offering more immediacy to our needs and desires. To do so, real flights will be performed in the city of Benidorm, enabled by the use of EGNSS and intelligent systems for the safe navigation inside the challenging urban scenario Benidorm offers.
Benidorm’s coastal urban area
The official start of the DELOREAN project took place last January 20th 2020 with the project’s kick-off meeting. Since then many advances have been accomplished: two CONOPS (Concept of Operations), one for each type of service, are being defined as well as the Urban Lab is being characterized. The Urban Lab is the actual place where the scenarios are being outlined and gathers all the necessary information such as the regulatory framework, or the technological aspects, that needs to be taken into account. With all the previously mentioned documentation real urban scenarios will be able to be fully designed and ready to be flown by drones.
The consortium working behind this project is formed by CATEC, GeoNumerics, Airbus, Correos, Bauhaus Luftfahrt, Eurocontrol, UPV (Universitat Politècnica de València) and PildoLabs. All together intend to test, evaluate and quantify how distinguishing features of EGNOS and Galileo can contribute to the positioning and integrity requirements of such air services.
For more information on the project please check out the project’s webpage on the following link: https://sites.google.com/pildo.com/delorean
