The excitement around drones has taken off as the media spotlight turned to Farnborough Air Show and the projects which have received the backing of the Government, thanks to major new funding via research agency UKRI and an ambitious vision for the UK’s future drone economy.
The project to capture headlines was undoubtedly Skyway, the world’s longest automated drone superhighway that will connect the Midlands to the South East of England and cover a total of 165 miles. Altitude Angel is leading the project, and BT is one of the key partners, along with several UK tech start-ups.
We’re excited about Skyway’s potential because it will enable us to explore the many use cases for unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs safely and responsibly and help us develop products and services that could transform the country. A world where medical supplies are routinely delivered to NHS hospitals via drone or roads and railways that can be inspected remotely without having to place people’s lives at risk is just an example of what could be commonplace in the future thanks to this project.
Our EE mobile network, the largest and most reliable in the UK, will be the backbone for Skyway. I’m proud that we can bring expertise and knowledge from across the business to contribute to the partnership. BT research has found that over two-thirds of 68% of the British public believe drones will positively impact their lives in the future. But we can’t be complacent about public acceptance of drones.
We want to prove that we can live safely alongside drones and demonstrate the positive impact they can have on our economy, creating jobs and making businesses more efficient to relieve the pressure on escalating living costs. While Skyway is the biggest project we were involved in, it’s by no means the only one. It’s also important to reference the other partnerships that have received Government backing this week and where BT has a key role. Atypical Airspace BVLOS Beyond Visual Line of Sight Solution AABS is a project led by sees ai. It uses its advanced drone system to allow safe and efficient drone flight in even the most complex and space-constrained areas.
They will be deploying the technology for critical national infrastructure in the first instance to demonstrate its safety to regulators and the Government. The BTS team will support mobile connectivity through our EE 4G and 5G networks, enabling a data feed to go from the local environment to the sees.ai control room. During the project, we will also explore how satellite backhaul could be used to provide further resiliency for sees.ai.
The AABS project will help us understand more about the organisation’s requirements for providing high bandwidth, and low latency data feeds over our 4G and 5G network. This will play a critical role in the drone’s use case and ability to operate safely. In the case of sees.ais solution, the data feed enables remote operators in a control room to supervise drones on sites nationwide as they execute safe and efficient autonomous flight and data capture.
In time, this approach will enable a single remote operator to supervise multiple drones; indeed, in this project, we aim to fly two drones with one remote operator supervising simultaneously. Another exciting project where BT is adding expertise is InDepth.Our Applied Research team based at Adastral Park in Suffolk – BTs global RD centre – will work with the Association of British Ports ABP, Kier and several start-ups to expand on previous research and trials.InDepth will use drones to carry out automatic BVLOS missions to monitor and control critical national infrastructures such as highways and ports.
For example, our Applied Research team will use technology to create a high-fidelity 3D digital twin of a port and use this to combine backend operational data with real-time data from drones to give a rich picture of current port operations.AI will be used to analyse drone imagery in several use cases, including infrastructure inspection and management of assets, including vehicles.
Written by: Matthew Thomas
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