# Why UTMs are Key to Remote Drone Operations

- Event: NestGen ’22
- Published: March 3, 2022
- Length: 38:43
- Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/_LonCC4598I/

> The transcript of a recorded NestGen session, for reading or for use with an AI tool. It comes from the video's
> captions; automatic captions can mishear names and terms.

## About this session

Realize the importance of safely & reliably navigating through aerial traffic while conducting flights without onsite pilots.

## Transcript

**[0:13]** hello everyone welcome to another stunning session of nation 20. aviation is ever evolving utm or unmanned traffic management is a term used frequently but often misunderstood within the industry our guest speaker today is going to share his stance on udn and why it's essential for the next evolution in air traffic management while opening the skies safely to all users to share the new methodology that helps enable safe flight for both crude and unproved aircraft please welcome philip bicks philip joined altitude angel in the may of 2018 to take up the newly created position of head of air traffic management previously philip worked for the uk's largest ansp nas where he led the position for our past domain experts and solution architect in this role he was the focal point for all rpas activities addition philip supported several high-profile programs such as the uk's pathfinder

**[1:16]** program the industry action program and held a seat on the icao our bus band having begun his career in the aviation as an air traffic controller for the raf philip has unrivaled knowledge of atm and airspace and understands the complexity of integrating drones safely into our airspace over terrified good afternoon good evening thank you very much for inviting me to come along and speak uh to speak today it's much appreciated um look let me just start by sharing my screen um so I can go through a presentation with you so just one moment please hi hopefully that hopefully you can have see the screen as it says why is utm important for uncrewed operations or other people call it unmanned uh operations or remotely piloted operations there are lots and lots of names given to this new airspace user but fundamentally I would like to explain and talk to why we actually need a utm to support this activity and also to help with that integration piece and the communication piece

**[2:18]** with traditional atm activities air traffic management so what I've decided to do is talk through or a a route it's not a formal recognized route but it's a route across london most people have heard of london it's a city that I know very well and the issues facing london today with introduction of uam aam advanced air mobility or urban air mobility or drones will probably have residents or similarities across other cities around the world and although I've mentioned primarily large drones this isn't just affecting large drones this could be smaller drones and operating visual line of sight activities or beyond visual line of sight activities but they all have some fundamentally the same issues which need to be addressed and this is why we'll need utm so let's take a flight then what we're going to be talking about is basically a flight from london city airport to heathrow airport hopefully you recognize those

**[3:21]** airports well they're from one side of london to the other side of london and in between we have quite a complex bit of airspace now if a manned aircraft wants to fly from london city to london heathrow what they'd have to do is submit a flight plan so air traffic management or nats could find out about why and the way the organizations get to hear about the flight is you submit a flight plan so you put the airport of departure london city the route of which you use which you wish to take and then the destination london heathrow and you submit this flight plan on what we call an iko.444.4444 flight plan and it gets disseminated to the relevant agencies you've got to put an addressee list a number of addresses down so the first address would be london city so air traffic controller london city would know about the aircraft then you'd have to go off to nats as that's the air navigation surge providers for this airspace they'd wish to know about that flight and then the destination airport heathrow obviously

**[4:25]** they would like to know about the flight also so you have what we call an iko dress list and and for example um london city will be lima golf lima charlie uh heathrow is lima golf lehman lee echo golf lima lima and it was to go to sonic center where the uh the aircraft would be controlled from swanning center is echo golf tango x-ray and very similar things happen all around the world so for example mumbai air traffic control center you need a victor alpha bravo foxtrot and that will make sure that this flight plan goes to mumbai um at mumbai air traffic control center but does the same thing work for unmanned aviation so this is what we'll start to explore and this is where I think we'll start to understand that perhaps the traditional methods don't simply don't work in the same way for unbanned aircraft so let's start talking about the airspace that we'll go through

**[5:28]** now I'm not sure how familiar with airspace structure so let me just quickly explain the basics where airspace can be bited into two elements basically you have controlled airspace that's when there's an airspace manager somebody who manages the airspace somebody who says yes or no to an aircraft they can fly through that airspace element management in order to access that airspace you have to have a minimum of quidditch levels on board the aircraft and quite typically believe it or not is a radio a vhf radio so you can actually speak to air traffic control but on the flip side of that there's other pieces of airspace which are uncontrolled airspace a good example of this is class g airspace and class gs base is what we call open vfr anybody can fly there you don't even need a radio on board the aircraft to speak to anybody so you can just go flying and there are two elements of airspace as I say I could get into more detail but I don't think it's needed for

**[6:29]** this this presentation but here is what we have a ctr and a cta we have control zones and control areas control zones or pieces of air space that go from surface from the ground up to a particular height and then for our control areas go from a particular height to another specified height but these are managed pieces of airspace so you must inform people in order to transit through that airspace so in this case it would be nat so that's quite simple but as we know london and a lot of airspace around cities it's incredibly busy today there's a lot of traffic going into heathrow there's a lot of traffic going to london city and there's a lot of adjacent airports as well just outside of this picture like gateway there's luton stan said so we start to get quite a complex environment and now we think of introducing unmanned aircraft into this as well so now we start to go how are we going to manage all these additional flights to access this airspace

**[7:33]** now today atm is all around people it's all around the communication of voice voice communication from the air traffic controller through to the pilot to partial instruction and the part that carries out the instruction well you're not going to be able to do that with unmanned aviation so therefore how can atm uh how can atm control this unmanned aircraft and in order to control more aircraft you actually need more people so quite simply atm isn't scalable there's a cost associated to it so we need to think of other ways of dealing so as we move on we'll start introducing more complex uh we'll start to see how complex the airspace can be now what we have here then is we have just seen the ctas and the ctrs that's controlled by nats we don't actually know what never the drones are going to be operating at or the uam

**[8:34]** urban air mobility advanced day mobility will be operating at so we need to consider do you think well is it going to affect other airports now we have some minor airport tonight's denim north halt well that's a military airport very very close to the center of london but then also we have uh bassy heliport that's right in the middle of london so they would like to know if they have drones transiting the airspace it's very very important obviously for safety and finally there's london city as you see but that's where we're starting off but we're starting to build up this picture now depending on the heights or the altitudes of which these drones are going to be operating at we start to think who else needs to be informed about this flight so from there it's not just other airport we have things like heli routes now these are heli routes I'll call vfr operations visual flight raw operations so if you wish to follow heli groups you must be able to look out on the window of

**[9:36]** your aircraft and see for yourself what's around you and make sure you miss everything else in the sky well there's some fundamental problem there when we start introducing unmanned aircraft by its very nature it's unmanned therefore there's nobody on there to look out of the window to make sure it's not being a hazard to other airspace users and make sure it can avoid anything else that's in the sky so we've got a big big problem we can't operate vfr in helli roots so we need to think about how we're going to get past those so effectively what we have is unmanned aircraft or uncrewed aircraft are operating ifr instant rules only so how do we look out of the window and see what else is going on we have other activities as well like gas venting sites anything that's introducing element of turbulence in the sky these airframes are going to be relatively small compared to commercial aircraft we see today so our gas venting site is going to be a problem are they going to generate a hazard they could very well be

**[10:37]** and also then we have these other things minor airports there's a site called brooklyn's brooklyn's is a site of one of the first grand prix circuits ever purpose-built grand prix circuits it's now a museum but it has fly-in times um aircraft flying from time to time well if we to go down the icao address list these guys don't have an iko reference so now I'm starting to think how can we inform elements or an airport about a drone flight that may be transiting its area but we can't use the ik addresses we can't use the purpose of command aviation here so how do we get around that so if we start to use telephone lines telephone calls well I suppose we could but if we start to go down that route well we start to get increasing workflow quite considerably so we're asking that code not only just to control the manned aircraft but to think about the unmanned aircraft and then to think about those elements actually aren't on we can't think about the airports that don't have an ik address

**[11:42]** list and then we've got to get someone else's phone to pop those so we start to get ever more complicated but that isn't the end of it around a lot of cities we have other restricted areas but in london here we have things like the isle of dogs and I'll put up the other one is the city of london these are what we call romeo areas and this is romeo 158 and 159 now these are financial centers or right in the city centre you can't simply just fly an aircraft through these areas you've got to get other approvals and in fact the isle of dogs in the city of london plans for drone operations and unmanned aircraft operations because they don't wish they are potentially security risk and then we've got this hyde park area as well now high park is um where a lot of the vips live with embassies royal families governments offices and stuff like that

**[12:42]** and therefore we have this other element where we've got to get the security services involved and the security services will want to know exactly who's flying through that airspace at what time and they will have the ultimate say of whether it can or cannot go ahead so we're looking right in the center of london here if you're looking right in the middle of that map we have we have gnats who are generally manage the airspace but in there we have battersea heliport and they want to know about any drone operations taking place because all the helicopters in and out and then we have hyde park romeo area romeo157 security services going in there so all of a sudden just for that one tiny little bit of space you have three elements or three authorities that will want to say yes or no to a flight actually taking place in that area so as you can see just a little area like that this now starts to get very very complicated and as I said before if the security service needs to give approval what's their iko address they don't

**[13:47]** have a ikea address and can we get the information back from them fast enough so we need to think about how can we engage non-traditional aviation authorities into um an approval pro share process an aviation uh approval process so we're starting to build up more stakeholders so we've gone through other elements as well what we're finding is we've had a lot of conversations in around cities and other areas of regions of countries and other regions of the world and as people start to understand what drones are happening they they start to look at well actually we want to know about this and what we have in the in um in london is the london portland function well their jurisdiction is the river thames and they manage the traffic along the river tent so you think well what have they got to do with drones

**[14:47]** um well lo and behold they say in order to protect what's going on in the thames they need to know what's flying above the thames and therefore if it's flying above the thames they want to get approval or whether the operation should take place or not now as it stands this is where there's some regulatory concerns who actually has the authority to manage that airspace now of course london port authority has I completely understand they want to make sure all the rivers all the rivers or whoever uses the river they are protected and they're not going to get anything falling out of the sky hitting but should they actually manage the airspace should they have an element of managing the airspace themselves which is something they'd like to do um there is a system what we have is a aircraft operating over a city is a fly clear so you don't get single engine operations going over a large city or a built up area an urban environment unless they can demonstrate they can glide clear so if the engine fails they can

**[15:51]** clear all the urban area and crash in a safe area I feel somewhere like that so I'm not sure how that plays with drones or unmanned uh sorry urban air mobility or aam but there's something that needs to be taken into consideration so anyway london port authority is now taking a very very keen interest there's also transport from london now transport for london um they coordinate all the transport activities and public transport across the whole city so again in london like many cities you probably have buses you have trains you're managing the road networks but now they're thinking well having air taxes do we need to get involved in the air taxes as well to make sure it's integrated having a complete network and the network actually working for the people of london and the people not just live there but people actually work in london as well so there's another element that they want to be able to manage

**[16:51]** so again it's a fine line do they need to manage the airspace or do they need to manage their approvals or do they just need to make sure that it's all integrated in the complete transport network for the city to make sure it all works for the city and the people of that city and finally then local councils now as I said earlier on we don't know what level these drones are going to be operating at or uam are going to be operating at if they operate at a high level the highest level two to three thousand feet well they're now playing mixing straight in with manned aviation so let's go add an element of complexity for air traffic control and I've already articulated by that kind of level and they're mixing with their traffic control how does air traffic control speak to an unmanned or uncrewed aircraft so there's a complexity there so therefore is that an appropriate level so then we start to come down a level and I said let's operate below that level now let's say we're operating down at 500 feet well we do have the complexity down if we've already mentioned the heli lanes and how we deconflict against those heliums so that let's say we can do

**[17:56]** that but if we start to have drones flying around there's an element of noise pollution coming in or there's elements of visual pollution coming in now some of the drones is going to be obviously air taxis they're going to go again from a to b and we can see them they're a taxi service no problems at all there are other activities that could be taking place where beyond visual line of sight activities where there may be surveying taking place there may be security services activities taking place but the key to all of these is going to have an effect on the general public the citizens of that city they're going to see all of this or they're going to hear all this and they're going to get potentially quite frustrated by all the noise if you just have one fixed route going from london city across the heathrow well how many hundreds of these drone operations are going to take place a day and noise is a very very um is a big issue that needs to be addressed in aviation

**[18:56]** heathrow worked very very hard to to have to address noise pollution by alternating runways on different approaches and stuff like this at different times of the day but because of these drones now operating even lower levels of the manned aircraft are the local councils going to have to get involved in the routes of where these drones can and cannot take place so local councils will probably want to be informed but I'll have some say about the route of complexity of where these drone operations are going to transit and again they may have to be shared that the noise may have to be spread out across the city so there may have to be several routes that go from let's say london city or from the city of london through to heathrow but the noise is going to have to be shared so at certain times of day only certain groups aren't going to be allowed and again it's something that needs to be addressed but it's something that unless we get local council support and you get public acceptance of these activities taking place we just simply won't

**[20:01]** be able to take the advantages that drones can bring and there are many many benefits that trojans can bring to societal benefits okay so we've gone from london city we're almost now we're getting right across the place almost at heathrow let's look at heathrow and see what happens next oops right here we go heathrow single airport but it's not just a single customer so heathrow who is actually the most important uh authority at the airport arguably security security will have a big big say about where these drones are coming from they all want to know about the routes in and out of this airspace um there's an awful lot going on so security or one lot of people that will need to know air traffic control yeah absolutely they'll definitely want to know they'll need to deconflicted against the manned aircraft now they might not necessarily control the uam urban air mobility going into the airport but they'll need to know about it

**[21:06]** now again as I said earlier on what we'll probably find happening is air traffic control incredibly busy it's a very very busy and complex environment heathrow is and they don't want to get distracted by the urban air mobility so we need to find a system whereby that the the uams can carry on and um as expected but they don't have to have a positive control from air traffic control so air traffic control can do their prime role of ensuring that manned aircraft are safe but what we do need to know is as long as the uam are adhering to their expected routes everything's fine but as soon as the conformance as soon as they're no longer performing as expected then we need to send some form of alert to air traffic control so some procedure could be put in place to say this isn't as expected there's a safety risk here therefore air traffic control can do something so now you're introducing controlling by exception so there's an element of that that now comes into play

**[22:07]** and then of course we have the police the police will always want to be informed have a big picture of what is going on and then I have heathrow we have airside operations the air and the airport and then who else at the airport we need to know so just simply there just at the airport there are five well at least four elements we'll need to know but the key to this ensuring it works correctly is there's a single point of truth everybody understands what is going on with the unmanned aircraft so if there is a mix-up people if there's an amount of coordination required or something's not happening quite right that can be identified very very quickly across all parties so and this is what utm is trying to do so as I've said I've just tried to show a very very simple route going from one side of a city to another side of the city it's about 25 miles but in there you've got potentially 16 to 20 other agencies that will need to be informed now none of these agencies have ever

**[23:10]** had anything to do with aviation before well a lot of the agencies have nothing to do with aviation before and therefore if you start introducing iko flight plans they won't understand there aren't any iko flight plan addresses for a council for a security service so now we need to disseminate the information in a different way and that's what utm does we're going to disseminate the information in a way that a person a non-aviator can understand we've got to give the information that everybody gets the same piece of information and they can see exactly what's going on they get the single point of truth and the utm will ensure that the appropriate authorities are asked about that flight so the drone operator or the utm uam operator doesn't isn't expected to know about every single agency that will need to know

**[24:11]** about that flight the utm will look at the route assess the route disseminate the information accordingly to the appropriate authorities and get those approvals once they've got all the approvals the flight can take place but it's not until they get all the approvals will they allow that flightscaper get airborne it won't say yes you have the approval to get airborne and of course not all things are equal just because the council will accept that flight through the airspace doesn't mean to say the security services will all the police or atc so there's lots and lots of elements there but as I say it can get incredibly complicated but this is all about keeping it simple for the operator and ensuring that the utm disseminates the right information to the right people at the right time in order to maintain a safe environment and not to overload the current airspace managers I.e air traffic control the atm they do an incredibly important job at the moment we can't afford to distract them with these new airspace users unless there's a big big

**[25:16]** safety risk and then they can address it so I think that's my final slide it is um there's a q a session here but hopefully that just gives you a little bit of an insight into the potential complexities of just introducing urban air mobility or drones into an environment that may appear quite simple but as you dig down more more agencies wish to get involved so I'll stop sharing I think thank you questions uh thanks uh for helping us understand why utm is the key for remote operations uh with this we would now like to open a house for a round of q a uh so audience please use the q a tab to ask the questions um all right we have a few questions all right so first question is how fast can people get an update on the dynamic airspace for example the no-fly zones on a particular day

**[26:17]** that's that's a really interesting question so and it's so important it's so so important so what we do here at altitude angel what we have is a guardian utm operating system and we have um for the uk alone we have 57 different data feeds coming into the system to ensure that we give real quality data out to the airspace user and one of those is live data one of those is you may have heard of no terms and notice to airmen now these that notice to airmen can give informed airspace users of many many bits and pieces it could be frequencies it could be navigation beacons but of course it's closures of airspace which is fundamental and a temporary closure of airspace which is very very important and utilizing a a tool like altitude angels uh utm solution or we have a thing called drone safety map it's accessible in I think it's 83 countries around the world real-time feed information it tells you about it

**[27:20]** and and on top of that as you submit a flight plan we can spend what we call airspace alert so if anything changes once a drone is airborne we can send alerts to the drone operation the drone operators and then just go right there's been a change to the airspace and therefore today it would mean the drone operator that can do something about that tomorrow the utm will automatically probably replan that drone or and it can it can manage the case itself but today it's making sure it can inform the human in the loop to ensure the airspace remains safe at all times all right thank you I hope that answers your question uh the next is how would you say regulations that help in management of drone flights and getting the info you need to monitor air traffic oh sorry I've misheard some of that can you sell it again okay uh how would you say regulations have helped in the management of drone flights

**[28:21]** and getting the info you need at to monitor air traffic so really oh wow it's a really interesting question so all around the world different regions of the world the regulations developing at different speeds today we don't necessarily have beyond visual line of sight operations routine beyond visual line of sight operations um they primarily take place in what we call segregated airspace so airspace is closed off and therefore beyond visual iron site operation can take place and nothing else can out into that airspace and that's where regulation is today um regulations are still being developed and the key is we must to be what we want to try and do is to get more and more drone activities taking place in order to provide evidence to the regulators so they can develop the right regulation in order to enable the operations to take place now I haven't I know I haven't really answered the question

**[29:23]** it's still really really evolving as I say it's very very early early in the industry there's a huge steep learning curve and the regulators quite rightly are must ensure that the airspace remains safe for current airspace users as well as ensuring that people on the ground aren't going to get hurt if there's an incident so it is a slow intuitive process the thing we can do though is support the regulators by giving them evidence and trialling things get things flying give the regulators evidence and make sure the appropriate regulations are in place it is happening it's happening at different speeds in different regions of the world we we've just got to keep supporting the regulators to make sure this happens something that we do an awful lot of here at altitude angel so the next question is from brandon uh you mentioned atc does uh deconfliction with

**[30:26]** man aircraft does doubly handle the confliction between unmanned aircraft at a high level how does it do this are you talking about um is that talking about um high level pseudo satellite so we're talking very very high sort of 66 000 feet that height is that what that question's referring to do you know um brandon he hasn't said have they I don't know whether somebody could just whoever's typed that question if they could just clarify are you talking about altitudes really really high at 66 000 feet or flight level 16. in terms of conception conceptual I'm not entirely sure I'm not 100 question I really apologize so what I think it is um very very high altitude stuff we we have um today and I apologize if I'm being really really basic and simple the majority of drone operations affecting us today are very very low levels sub 500

**[31:30]** feet aircraft then uh operates in levels up to about forty five thousand fifty thousand feet with commercial airlines they're flying at that level you do have a few military aircraft that operate above that and then we get to sort of sixty six thousand get to sixty sixty six thousand feet and we go into high level airspace it's one called non-controlled airspace some people call it class e s facebook class g s and this is where we're seeing these pseudo satellite aircraft operating high altitude pseudo-satellite aircraft now I don't see those aircraft they could be up there for months at a time I don't see manned atc controlling those aircraft they're automated machines so there will be an element of utm managing the airspace up there to deconflict and it will be an automated system with a person over the loop rather than person actually getting actively involved in control obviously there's a problem with that if there is an issue with an aircraft really

**[32:32]** really high level and it's got to come back down it's going to come back down through all this manned aviation or to come back down safely and land safely so how does that there's an element of coordination that's needed to get through all of that and of course that's got to be that's going to be looked at it's got to be um it's got to be explored we don't really want to close off vast volumes of airspace big big tubes of airspace let these aircraft spiral down in a controlled manner because they could block critical very very busy periods of time so um I'm hoping that's answered the question again haven't I'm happy to take an email ping an email to me and I'll try and write it down and explain it a little bit better so I apologize but that's kind of I think where where we're going with that question um I guess brandon has rephrased the question uh uh does audio angel do deconfliction between us operations so two elements of that um there's strategic deconfliction so you um strategic and tactical deconfliction strategic deconfliction

**[33:33]** is to plan and avoid and it happens in manned aviation you fly planet system and what you you get flow control and manned aviation that's the element of planning and avoid and that's absolutely what we do um and basically what we do is uh unmanned aviation there's a volume of airspace here which one aircraft or unmanned aircraft is operating in there's another volume of airplace or another uam is operating in we make sure the two don't overlap but if they do we we address the problem again that is sort of um segregating aircraft rather than integrating them they're having uh big big blocks of airspace which are sort of close doctor of airspace users not very very efficient so the next level you go to is what called tactical deconfliction and that's what it means is tactically you've done strategic deconfliction to make sure hopefully things remain clear but as you start your tactical there's a real time information coming in you can see there's a definite risk of confliction and therefore the utm will provide the necessary instructions in order to deconflict those aircraft today

**[34:34]** there is a human in the loop tomorrow there'll be a human over the loop humans will not be involved as the airspace gets busy and you start to get thousands of these drone operations taking place there's no way a human will be able to process everything that's going on and therefore the utm will take over and provide that tactical deconfliction capability all right there are a lot of questions falling but I guess we can answer like one last question um do so this question is from geneva do you think there will be a dedicated uh corridors for drones to operate in I don't want that to be is the answer to that um today I it's I think it's it's going to be an evolutionary process today in order to get drones operating corridors are a sensible way to go forward because the corridors it's enabling a segregated airspace to make sure the airspace is sterilized for a

**[35:37]** drone to travel beyond visual line of sight you can go through there nothing else is going to use that piece of airspace the only trouble with the corridor is it is you're segregating and you're not integrating drones and segregation is not necessarily scalable if you're closing off all these lumps of airspace and no other airspace user can use that airspace it's just not a scalable approach and other airspace user traditional airspace users are going to get enormously frustrated by this so there is a technology and again altitude angel of our leaders in this and focusing on it where we are setting up corridors for drones to operate in but they'll be non-segregated airspace so anything can transit through that airspace whatever they want but they'll be following effectively a corridor in the sky so the drone will have to fire a corridor but nobody else has to adhere to that corridor at all so we want to make sure that we are integrating and not segregating yes there may be corridors but those corridors are going to be um

**[36:40]** not restricting other airspace users but quite simply also the technology that's going to be used around those corridors can be used over areas as well so it can be used in an area of entire city to enable unmanned banned aircraft operate side by side and be integrated safely into the airspace thank you phillip before we go yeah before we go would you like to share any closing thoughts wow um look there's there's so many interesting this topic is a massive topic I think it's absolutely brilliant that the more and more regions of the world that are starting to explore the benefits that drones can bring I think it's a really really exciting industry I'd love to see more and more of these kind of [Music] conferences taking place I'd like to get involved in these conferences and get these discussions going I think it's really really important that we have these discussions we support

**[37:40]** the drone operations moving forward because that's the only way we're going to enable safe phone operations to take place and when we start ensuring safe drain operations we will then see the real benefits that drones can bring the real societal benefits and that's whether it's in a disaster area or that could be on a day-to-day basis in a town or city but that's what I think we're aiming for and I think it's got a really exciting industry to get involved with because it really is at its infancy so thank you very much for inviting me to come along to speak today it is much appreciated and uh if you do have any questions please don't hesitate to reach uh to reach out to altitude angel and we'd be more than happy to um to answer any questions you may have thank you so much and thank you all for joining us today uh we have three exciting sessions coming up in the next five minutes please visit the reception description or the sessions tab to learn more about the upcoming sessions have a great day administrator thank you