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Altitude Angel, a UK startup that provides security management systems, data and traffic for drones, is launching a conflict resolution service for drone flights, available through its development API platform.
"The dynamic system will continuously monitor the airspace around an aircraft for" unforeseen "occurrences such as other air vehicles or changes to airspace (such as a temporary flight restriction / dynamic geological barrier around the aircraft). of a police incident), "he wrote of the new service.
"After identifying a potential conflict, CRS will make the necessary road adjustments to allow the drone to maintain an appropriate separation standard among other airspace users or to fly over restricted airspace so that it can continue in any desired manner. (and effectively) towards its destination. "
The Global Conflict Resolution Service (CRS) has two components: strategic conflict resolution, which will begin on July 23, allowing drone operators to submit their flight plans at startup to determine if there is a conflict with other flight plans already submitted, or against geo-fenced areas on the ground and in the airspace available Altitude angelGlobal data flows.
If a conflict is identified Altitude Angel indicates that its CRS will propose changes in take-off time and / or track to "eliminate conflict" – suggesting, as it says "minimally invasive modifications to allow the mission to continue unchecked".
The service also supports "private" modes for fleet operators who only want to check for conflicts with their own drones or customers.
The second component – to be launched at the end of September – is called Tactical Disablement. This will provide information to the drone pilots or the drone itself to maintain separation during the flight phase.
"Today we bring commercially available data streams of every element of human air traffic. So it's every commercial flight, that is, in some cases, police helicopters, medical helicopters, and so on. The tactical service will then complete this drone on drone collision data. [from the Statistical CRS] with drones in human aviation, "says CEO Richard Parker.
The British start-up, which also provides data to feed the geofencing services of drones (drone maker DJI is one of its clients) positions its software and services company as an enabling layer for According to Parker, unmanned traffic management (UTM) companies, national organizations and fleet operators can integrate their own products.
"What we do is go beyond what a typical UTM company considers to be its own customers, and then provide everyone with the flight plans we have received," he said. he told TechCrunch. "So, for example, Uber could use the [CRS] to record all flights from Uber and Amazon could use this service to register all flights from Amazon – but together, via the API, they can avoid each other.
"This is a service that connects everyone and tells you only the conflicts that may occur."
It is clear that the value of the strategic conflict resolution component will increase with the number of users, which will increase the visibility it can offer on what is stolen when and where.
Although Altitude Angel does not claim to be able to offer a complete view of all that is artificial in the sky.
"One of the things we think is prevalent in the UTM industry today is misrepresentation," says Parker. "It would be very easy for us to market this wrongly. We could have done this by saying that this service guaranteed that no drone would fail. It's just not true. However, what it does guarantee is that any drone that has submitted a plan to us will be informed at the outset if it is likely to run into another.
"And when the tactical service comes online, again, we will be extremely clear: if everything else can conflict with this service, we can then ensure that separation."
He stressed that even ANSPs can not all air traffic all the time. CRS is therefore presented as a way for drone operators to increase awareness of what may be flying in the vicinity, thus reducing the risk of a collision or security incident.
With respect to the dynamic conflict resolution component of the conflict resolution system, designed to alert drone operators of unexpected craft in their vicinity, Altitude Angel says it is based on "proven safety technology."
According to Parker, the main platform on which it is based has been in service since 2016 and was originally used by general aviation pilots to request access to a transit airspace from clbad D, meaning that it "accumulated thousands of claims" and was the subject of "thorough checks". including national air traffic services.
"It's an extremely reliable and robust service," he says.
Altitude Angel is also expanding its GuardianUTMS airspace management platform. Parker points out that the company's corporate environment is in mbadive distributed cloud systems – so it's common to treat something like 7M-10M API requests a month.
"So we think we have a reasonably robust and reliable system," he says. "A system that can also tolerate failure and do a lot of self-healing. From an infrastructure standpoint, it is very robust and, from an application point of view, many use cases and operational loads were used by one of the most highly regarded security service providers. reliable and most respected in the world.
"The use always increases. We are still learning from that. But again, our main goal is to publish it, use it, monitor it, and make sure it improves over time. It's a kind of exploration, walking and running service, "he adds.
All of Altitude Angel's current customers subscribe to the SIR – which, according to Parker, will result in 5,000 to 6,000 flights per month, fueling the conflict resolution service.
"We will then connect to our additional flights that have been shared with us, so I think we're talking about a pretty significant proportion of all the flights that are shared with a UTM today," he says. he. "We will then work with our ANSP customers to see if the authorization requests they are currently managing can also be connected to this network. And I think it's a really interesting area to explore.
"Again, we only do this because, in the end, everyone in the industry wants to go beyond the line of sight, everyone wants to have a more automated flight system. But the reality is that the infrastructure simply does not exist on the ANSP and regulatory side – and that technology does not exist either, from a safety management point of view, on the commercial side.
"So that's the gap we're trying to bridge so that more people can access it."
It may be more logical for UAV conflict resolution platforms to be run by national bodies rather than a commercial entity, but Parker is not afraid that regulators will invest and claim the right to use the UAV platform. space, because the company is positioned to play several roles: Help drone operators to integrate and adapt to changing regulations, while ensuring that it can act as a bridge for ANSP if governments decided that a regulator would provide a UTM solution.
"The technology we provide to our customers is provided by our own developer platform for the commercial sector, but we also provide a version of that same system, in an efficient way, to ANSPs so that they can offer this service at the national level, "he said.
"I think it's important to recognize that many of these ANSPs do not yet need to do this. So, they do not necessarily deploy these foundations … What is perhaps interesting is that our commitment to developer clients and users of our commercial technology is to remove them from all local regulations and differences that might occur. internationally. "
"In the UK, if the government suddenly turns around to [UK air traffic operator] NATS and says, "You have to provide UTM services to the whole country. We do not operate this service, but we very much hope that we will have the opportunity to provide NATS with the technology to deliver it. ability to the rest of the industry, "he adds, noting Angel Altitude already provides the Airspace User Portal technology to NATS.
"Once again, we have this commercial aspect of the business, which is to allow these people to integrate into the regulated community, and then we have a technological capability. [Guardian UTMS] this is what we are asking ANSPs to allow them to open the sky, work with drones and adopt them in their airspace. "
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