UK BLUEPRINT project plans BVLOS tests in Cranfield Airport’s drone zone

In collaboration with Cranfield Airport, Project BLUEPRINT is one of six projects selected to take part in the UK (United Kingdom) Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Temporary Reserved Area (TRA) Regulatory Sandbox, coordinated by the CAA’s Innovation Advisory Service.

Project members work closely with the subject matter experts within the CAA to progress towards the objectives of successfully trialling integrated BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line Of Sight) drone operations within UK airspace.

Project BLUEPRINT was one of the winning consortium projects of the UK Research & Innovation Future Flight Challenge Phase 3. The team is led by Neuron Innovations, and includes Ebeni, Cranfield Airport, Cranfield University, University of Southampton, DroneCloud, ANRA Technologies, Sky-Drones, Distributed Avionics and Future Aerial Innovations.

The consortium will set up a drone zone around Cranfield Airport, using transponders as a means to ensure drones and aircraft stay safely separated from one another. The consortium includes vertical integration of an airport/ANSP and its Air Traffic Control function with two uncrewed traffic management (UTM) providers, two avionics manufacturers and two drone operators in order to show how this open architecture can be implemented in a competitive and open marketplace.

The aim of project BLUEPRINT is to provide regulators, technology providers and operators with a “blueprint” for UK-wide rollout of BVLOS drone operations, which can be commercialised at scale. The blueprint will allow stakeholders to design, plan and build routine and scalable BVLOS drone capabilities that can be exported on a European level.  Project Blueprint is working with Cranfield Airport, the CAA and other TRA Sandbox partners, to develop a TRA BVLOS test environment at Cranfield Airport, which will enable drones and crewed aircraft to co-exist in a safe and efficient operating environment through the:

• Deployment of a low-cost ground-based detect and avoid network,
• Development and integration of open-access UTM (UAS (Uncrewed Aircraft Systems) Traffic Management) architecture into Cranfield Airport,
• Production of six BLUEPRINTs to scale this concept of drone zone operation across the UK; applicable to specific category drone operations, both multi-rotor, single rotor and fixed wing drones up to approximately 500kg.

The project intends to complete research & development flights within the TRA to reflect the rotary and fixed wing use cases and related end user benefits during the sandbox. This is to provide evidence to the regulator on the safety of ADS-B enabled BVLOS flight operations within TRA and aims to validate that ADS-B TRAs (Temporary Reserved Area) are effective in integrating all airspace users safely.

BLUEPRINT and the TRA Sandbox

The TRA will enable the live operational testing of operations and technology and will help validate safety risk mitigating evidence and identified standards, and which will enable the CAA to influence regulatory guidelines and acceptable means of compliance (AMC). These can be aligned with other TRA Sandbox users to ensure an increased set of test data and therefore improved validation. In turn, this scales integrated BVLOS sustainability by enabling regulatory guidance through trialling and testing. By flying within a TRA Sandbox, this will help BLUEPRINT to: