K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
Funded by the SESAR Joint Undertaking (SESAR JU) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, Gulf of Finland (GOF) 2.0 provides Europe and the entire Drone Industry with valuable data and lessons learned. In late 2021, Commercial UAV News spoke with Gokul Srinivasan, Director of Technology at Robots.Expert, a member of the consortium, to get an exclusive in-depth look into the trial.
GOF 2.0, as the name suggests, is the sequel to GOF 1.0, which concluded in 2019 after some exciting results, including Volocopter's flight in Helsinki. SESAR JU did quite a few things in GOF 1.0 - one of the best things that came out was the architecture, which became the reference architecture for use cases in Europe. Following that, GOF 2.0 enhances that architecture and squeezes it into operational planning, validation, and evaluation. In essence, the plan is to focus on safety, security, and a sustainable way of integrating manned and unmanned aerial vehicles, including Urban Air Mobility vehicles, into dense airspace without disrupting ongoing operations.
The first step is to retrofit the architecture from the previous project and make changes in relevant places. Then, SESAR JU will heavily focus on understanding at what point does it fail to know its limitations. Srinisavan told Commercial UAV News that "trying to understand where something fails has two sides." On one side, you can develop a defeat mechanism to make the system fail. On the other side, it can also mean you understand the extent to which something works and, from there, extract the information and focus on Minimum Operation Performance Specifications (MOPS).
Another focus of 2.0 is on the integration of different systems. For example, Srinisavan talks about U-Space service providers working as different entities, such as a company providing better monitoring service, improved situational awareness, or UTM. The idea is that all of them would have to talk to the same system cohesively so that everybody in the airspace consumes this information and can maintain a safe distance from each other, hence focusing on a separation both in a Strategic and Tactical level. Strategic means separating aircraft before they take off, and Tactical focuses on deconflicting airborne situations, such as overlapping flight paths. This could range anywhere from focusing on separation minima to detect-and-avoid measures. That's essentially what GOF 2.0 is trying to do.
About 15 different partners from across the EU are involved in this project. It has a good healthy combination of drone operators, air taxi operators, Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs), and Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs). There are also UTM service providers involved and many different service providers, making Gulf 2.0 a system of systems model with many moving parts.
In an international beyond visual line of sight flight from Helsinki, Finland to Tallinn, Estonia, SESAR JU used multiple electronic conspicuity devices simultaneously for the first time. Conspicuity devices consistently report where they are in the airspace so that UTM systems can easily track them. Since Helsinki and Tallinn are both busy and tight controlled airspaces, one of the objectives of this test was to understand how exiting and entering controlled airspaces would work without disrupting ongoing operations, such as not redirecting other flights or shutting down the airspace or runway.
Continue reading: https://www.commercialuavnews.com/europe/flying-drones-across-international-borders-lessons-learned-from-the-gulf-of-finland-gof-2-0-drone-trials
GOF 2.0, as the name suggests, is the sequel to GOF 1.0, which concluded in 2019 after some exciting results, including Volocopter's flight in Helsinki. SESAR JU did quite a few things in GOF 1.0 - one of the best things that came out was the architecture, which became the reference architecture for use cases in Europe. Following that, GOF 2.0 enhances that architecture and squeezes it into operational planning, validation, and evaluation. In essence, the plan is to focus on safety, security, and a sustainable way of integrating manned and unmanned aerial vehicles, including Urban Air Mobility vehicles, into dense airspace without disrupting ongoing operations.
The first step is to retrofit the architecture from the previous project and make changes in relevant places. Then, SESAR JU will heavily focus on understanding at what point does it fail to know its limitations. Srinisavan told Commercial UAV News that "trying to understand where something fails has two sides." On one side, you can develop a defeat mechanism to make the system fail. On the other side, it can also mean you understand the extent to which something works and, from there, extract the information and focus on Minimum Operation Performance Specifications (MOPS).
Another focus of 2.0 is on the integration of different systems. For example, Srinisavan talks about U-Space service providers working as different entities, such as a company providing better monitoring service, improved situational awareness, or UTM. The idea is that all of them would have to talk to the same system cohesively so that everybody in the airspace consumes this information and can maintain a safe distance from each other, hence focusing on a separation both in a Strategic and Tactical level. Strategic means separating aircraft before they take off, and Tactical focuses on deconflicting airborne situations, such as overlapping flight paths. This could range anywhere from focusing on separation minima to detect-and-avoid measures. That's essentially what GOF 2.0 is trying to do.
About 15 different partners from across the EU are involved in this project. It has a good healthy combination of drone operators, air taxi operators, Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs), and Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs). There are also UTM service providers involved and many different service providers, making Gulf 2.0 a system of systems model with many moving parts.
In an international beyond visual line of sight flight from Helsinki, Finland to Tallinn, Estonia, SESAR JU used multiple electronic conspicuity devices simultaneously for the first time. Conspicuity devices consistently report where they are in the airspace so that UTM systems can easily track them. Since Helsinki and Tallinn are both busy and tight controlled airspaces, one of the objectives of this test was to understand how exiting and entering controlled airspaces would work without disrupting ongoing operations, such as not redirecting other flights or shutting down the airspace or runway.
Continue reading: https://www.commercialuavnews.com/europe/flying-drones-across-international-borders-lessons-learned-from-the-gulf-of-finland-gof-2-0-drone-trials
