Blockchain Will Co-Ordinate Airspace so Delivery Drones Don’t Crash

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Blockchain and drones: How will we con­trol the new high­ways of the skies above us as small air­craft fill the the space above our cities?

Blockchain is a new indus­try. And yet, there are sys­tems being con­ceived around it that are even new­er. And this con­cept is one of them. For those of us with kids, we are being told to pre­pare them for jobs that don’t exist yet. So read on.

It has been pre­dict­ed that with­in a cou­ple of years, drones will be above us all the time. They will oper­ate in a sub-lay­er of the sky, below com­mer­cial flight paths and mil­i­tary jets. But their flight paths will need to be coor­di­nat­ed. This is so they don’t smash into each oth­er while deliv­er­ing car­go, fer­ry­ing peo­ple, and inspect­ing things like wind tur­bines and bridges. No one needs to be rained on by smash­ing drones, thanks.

A sub-lay­er of air traf­fic con­trol has been con­ceived to address this. It will work using both dis­trib­uted ledger tech (DLT), blockchain, and automa­tion. Research around this new sub-lay­er in the avi­a­tion indus­try is already well under­way. The idea is to improve safe­ty, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and interoperability.

Cran­field researchers are part of this project. They say the sys­tem will inte­grate an ecosys­tem of crewed and uncrewed air­craft in the UK’s skies.

Air taxi drones in urban air­space. Cred­it: AMU-LED Consortium

Unmanned Drones

These researchers say that uncrewed aer­i­al vehi­cles are already bring­ing ben­e­fits to humans. Exam­ples giv­en are solv­ing med­ical logis­ti­cal prob­lems in iso­lat­ed areas, and inspect­ing dif­fi­cult-to-reach infra­struc­ture, like high masts.

The researchers say that a new air traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tem will “open up a new age of com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties for the avi­a­tion sec­tor, as well as drone-enhanced pub­lic ser­vices: urban air taxis, car­go and deliv­ery ser­vices, secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions, health­care sup­port and envi­ron­men­tal monitoring.”

Accord­ing to PWC and UKRI, a new indus­try around uncrewed and autonomous avi­a­tion will be worth an esti­mat­ed £42bn to the UK econ­o­my by 2030. This is thanks to new jobs, cost sav­ings, and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains. Once this new indus­try is estab­lished, a hybrid air­space is pre­dict­ed to be in place from around 2024.

Source

Blockchain – Increasing Transparency and Trust

This future – of an uncrewed air­craft using blockchain-style tech­nol­o­gy to solve logis­ti­cal prob­lems – is being worked on by a col­lab­o­ra­tion of 13 con­sor­tium part­ners, includ­ing Cran­field, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, Heathrow Air­port, IAGNATS, and SITA. Also in the mix are some UK-based startups.

As drones fly over us, the sys­tem will allow thou­sands of inde­pen­dent com­put­ers to share the his­to­ry of data – of who did what and when. Says Cran­field, “The sys­tem includes ‘smart con­tracts’, con­trols over user actions backed up by cod­ed secu­ri­ty. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence will enhance cyber­se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures for the DLTs, allow­ing for con­stant real-time data col­lec­tion, pro­cess­ing and autho­riza­tion dur­ing operations.”

Automation and autonomy will unlock huge benefits

Dr Dim­itrios Pana­gio­takopou­los is a Senior Lec­tur­er in Uncrewed Air­craft Sys­tems Traf­fic Man­age­ment at Cran­field. “Human oper­a­tors in tra­di­tion­al ATM are already fac­ing high work­loads and a del­uge of data from dif­fer­ent infor­ma­tion sys­tems, flight plan­ning, radar and weath­er. The cur­rent approach isn’t scal­able to meet the needs of a more com­plex and demand­ing hybrid air­space of crewed and uncrewed traf­fic. To access the huge poten­tial ben­e­fits of a new kind of air­space there has to be more automa­tion and auton­o­my – but that can only hap­pen with water­tight sys­tems and a shared sense of trust.”

Dr Dim­itrios Pana­gio­takopou­los, Senior Lec­tur­er in Uncrewed Air­craft Sys­tems Traf­fic Man­age­ment at Cran­field University

Yann Cabaret is the CEO of SITA. “Not dis­sim­i­lar to the wider air trans­port indus­try, the suc­cess­ful intro­duc­tion of Uncrewed Air­craft Sys­tems will rely heav­i­ly on secure data exchange between oper­a­tors, air­ports and air traf­fic man­age­ment. Through this research part­ner­ship we are con­fi­dent that using DLTs will improve the flow of action­able data between trans­porta­tion stake­hold­ers to sup­port the effi­cient and safe oper­a­tion of unmanned air­craft in future. At SITA, we have already demon­strat­ed the ben­e­fits of DLT in track­ing air­craft parts to shar­ing oper­a­tional data at the air­port. This is a nat­ur­al exten­sion of that work.”

Testing scenarios in urban environments 

So far, we have estab­lished that most peo­ple who live in cities can expect to see a vari­ety of drones in the air­space above them, and soon. These drones will be tak­ing peo­ple to hos­pi­tals, putting out fires, or deliv­er­ing parcels.

Accord­ing to Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM), “Just like the air traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tem for gen­er­al air­craft, [this] will ensure that drone oper­a­tions are car­ried out safe­ly and effi­cient­ly. The sys­tem is more auto­mat­ed than cur­rent air traf­fic con­trol, with less human inter­ac­tion and the capac­i­ty to han­dle more flights simultaneously.” 

Gokhan Inal­han is the Pro­fes­sor of Autonomous Sys­tems and Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence at Cran­field. “This is a very excit­ing project and one that will pave the way for high­ways in the skies, remov­ing traf­fic and con­ges­tion and chang­ing the way we move around.” 

Let’s watch this space, and remem­ber to look up.

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Disclaimer

All the infor­ma­tion con­tained on our web­site is pub­lished in good faith and for gen­er­al infor­ma­tion pur­pos­es only. Any action the read­er takes upon the infor­ma­tion found on our web­site is strict­ly at their own risk.



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