The CORUS-XUAM consortium is a large-scale European project, led by SESAR JU and funded under Horizon Europe 2020, dedicated to Urban Air Mobility.
FREMONT, CA: The CORUS-XUAM consortium is a large-scale European project dedicated to urban air mobility, led by SESAR JU and funded under Horizon Europe 2020. This two-year project intends to define and test new U-Space services required for these new types of air transportation to operate safely and efficiently, which is a crucial issue for smart and sustainable mobility in the future.
Indeed, the field of UAM is broad because it encompasses new modes of transportation such as drones, eVTOLs (electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft), and other remotely piloted aircraft, all of which have been identified by the European Commission to manage their integration into the airspace. As a result, UAM necessitates the creation of airspace management structures, procedures, and shared services.
As a result, CORUS-XUAM demonstrates manned and unmanned aircraft operations in urban and interurban environments using U-Space services, intending to develop an operational interface between Air Navigation Services (ANS) and operators of UAVs and other remotely piloted aircraft. Within the following ten years, an operational offer is projected to develop and be promoted. The first milestone will be demonstrating pre-commercialization services at the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris.
In light of this, the project's first field tests on the experimental platform took place during the week of February 14, 2022, at the Pontoise- Corneilles en Vexins aerodrome. M3 Systems, Hologarde, and the ADP Group collaborated to conduct a test session of Hologarde's UAV traffic management technology in low altitude airspace (UTM). This was made feasible by BOREAL SAS's assistance, which flew its unmanned aerial vehicle BOREAL, which was observable (according to national regulations) and spotted by Hologarde's collaborative drone management solution.
The USSP (U-Space Service Provider – Hologarde) and the BOREAL telepilots have successfully shown the transmission of information in real-time, as well as alarms such as flight plan deviations, exceeding maximum heights, or penetration of banned airspace. The activation of these alerts allows the project to move forward to phase 2, which is conflict resolution within the airspace of the first prospective European Vertiport (eVTOL docking station), which will be built in Pontoise by the British business Skyports starting in June 2022.
