The CAFA Tech team, together with other GOF2 project partners, participated in the Urban Air Mobility tests at Malmi Airport in Helsinki, Finland.

Cooperation between drones and UTM systems and the ATCO (Air Traffic Controller officer) was practiced. We used a drone with a 4G / 5G mobile device on board and control of the drone over the Elisa mobile network

The CAFA Tech workflow looked like this:

• The drone operator generated a logistics flight mission in the Ground Control System
• Due to the integration between the CAFA GCS and the Frequentis UTM system, the planned mission of the drone immediately appeared in the UTM. A screenshot of the UTM system shows how the trajectory of the flight plan awaiting Authorization is shown in red.
• If there were no flight restrictions in the same area in the UTM, the flight plan was automatically approved by the UTM.
• The drone started the flight and streamed its position, speed and direction continuously using a mobile connection.
• ATCO (Fintraffic expert) imposes a temporary ban on the Emergency Medical Helicopter approach
• The corresponding Alert appeared in the drone’s GCS, and the drone’s pilot cancelled the delivery mission and the drone flew back to the take off point.

At Malmi Airport, we had a very professional cooperation between the drone operators CAFA Tech, Threod, PSNC as well as UTM providers Frequentis, Pansa UTM and Aviamaps. Many thanks to the test organizers Fintraffic and Robots Expert.

For Urban Air Mobility to become a sustainable transportation system it must be integrated with other transportation infrastructure, such as airports, harbors, train/bus terminals, as well as logistics centers. The ability of logistics drones to form a seamless transportation chain in and out of airports is therefore of utmost importance.

Tests have shown that the integrations between UTM and drone control systems work well – an important prerequisite for delivering Urban Air Mobility services with drones.