The government has announced a funding competition for the Future Flight Challenge starting with a two-day discovery workshop for successful applicants.
The workshop will refine, validate and collaborate on the challenge of Future Flight against six problem statements (see below).
The competition opens on Monday 30 September 2019 and closes on Wednesday 13 November 2019 at 12:00pm. Apply here
The Future Flight Challenge is a four-year, £125 million Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund programme.
The six problem statements:
- The full range of drone applications is stifled by the absence of the physical and data infrastructures needed to exploit the potential of the global market.
- Current air traffic management systems are not scalable. They will not cope with the change in volume of traffic, growing density, increasing diversity of airspace users and the demand for fully integrated, non-segregated airspace.
- There are no clear technology, regulatory or operational paths between piloted and remotely piloted with visual line of sight (VLOS), and remotely piloted Beyond VLOS (BVLOS) and fully autonomous air vehicle operation. There is a need to develop the technologies to create these integrated systems while maintaining high levels of safety.
- There is a need to move towards more electric flight by creating pathways between urban, sub-regional class vehicles, and larger aircraft, based on market driven technology.
- There is a need to develop use cases and operational frameworks to enable public engagement and create market demand for the adoption of autonomous air vehicles.
- There is no aviation innovation or development environment that will allow real-life demonstration and evaluation of the issues presented in the first five problem statements.
