Tackling different aspects of drone services utilizing technologies from cross-sectional industries

Abstract Enabling autonomous and Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the Very Low Level (VLL) airspace requires further advancement of technologies such as sensing the environment or secure and reliable communication. This paper addresses these challenges by presenting solutions developed within the project Airborne Data Collection on Resilient System Architectures (ADACORSA). Here, findings from cross-sectional areas such as the automotive industry are being further enhanced to fulfill the demands of aviation, in particular for use in the UAV domain. The developed technologies include an advanced Ethernet-based deterministic network for reliable onboard communication, a multi-sensor architecture for sensing the spatial environment as well as a multi-link communication gateway that provides reliable communication to the ground and a secure handover architecture.