Interaction between ATM and UAS Operators in U-space Operations and Potential Automation Benefits

Unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, are increasingly applied in civil use cases, in particular to support public interests, such as medical support systems for the urgent delivery of required goods or inter-hospital logistics. The usage of drones can be advanced by the European U-space, which is a service-driven ecosystem within geographically defined airspace boundaries, designed for the utilization of highly automated unmanned aircraft systems in particular. However, U-space airspace boundaries border with controlled and uncontrolled airspace used by traditional airspace users, who are supervised and controlled by air traffic management systems and procedures. The emerging potential interaction between airspace users on the one hand and air traffic control on the other hand is a crucial way to improve safety of both manned and unmanned airspace users. This paper first defines relevant terminology in the field of unmanned aircraft systems and medical services and presents the background of the research, which is based on the U-space definition, the dynamic airspace reconfiguration functionality, and the requirement for electronic conspicuity. In a next step, operational use cases of unmanned aircraft systems which may require efficient interaction are collected from reference material as well as past and ongoing research and initiatives, in particular the SAFIR-Ready project. The interaction means between unmanned aircraft system operators and air traffic management are presented, being verbal, textual and digital ways of communication. Further, operational messages originating from the research project GOF 2.0 are taken as a basis for automated interaction between the actors, which are complemented with additional messages. In a next step, the interaction scenarios that stem from the collected operational use cases are presented. The roles and responsibilities of the actors are investigated, and the level of automation and interaction means are described per scenario. The usage of certain operational messages is proposed to enable a higher automation within such scenarios. Finally, the paper concludes with statements that there are still legal gaps when trying to apply the proposed interactions and procedures. To achieve higher automation for a safer and more efficient usage of UAS in a U-space in collaboration with traditional air traffic control in bordering ATM airspace, this should be subject to further research and feasibility studies.