Drones are emerging as a viable solution for urgent and reliable medical transport. SAFIR-Med, a recently-launched U-space large-scale innovation project will demonstrate how drones can be used to support Europe’s healthcare system to accelerate the adoption of drones into the healthcare system in a safe, sustainable and socially acceptable way.
SAFIR-Med (Safe and Flexible Integration of Advanced U-space Services for medical Air Mobility) will leverage the expertise of 17 renowned project partners supported by 8 cross industry advisory board members to demonstrate advanced U-space services enabling the highest possible operational safety level. These include detect-and-avoid as a service, dynamic geofencing and air traffic prioritization rules. Five drone platforms will be combined with manned aviation in operational exercises validating technology in real urban environment. The demonstration results will be further virtually enhanced through large-scale simulations in order to evaluate the maximum airspace capacity of the given locations.
flyXrive provides the eVTOL tiltwing platform, our fully automated tiltwing UAV TW-Neo with VTOL capability. The eVTOL will be demonstrated in three different scenarios, transporting urgend medical goods in Antwerpen and Aachen. To achieve this, we bring our extensive experience with BVLOS operation to the project.
The demonstrations will take place in collaboration with healthcare actors like hospitals and medical spaces in the cities of Antwerp (BE), Aachen (DE), Heerlen (NL) and Maastricht (NL), leveraging the MAHHL trans-border region. To achieve this, for the next two years SAFIR-Med will collaborate with representatives from the entire urban air mobility value chain as either project partners (ANSP/ATC, USSP, Operator, UAS Manufacturers, cities) or advisory board members (public authorities including cities, healthcare actors, technology & service providers).
The SAFIR-Med project partners are:
- Helicus (Project coordinator and medical flight operator)
- flyXdrive (Tiltwing VTOL & BVLOS operator)
- RWTH Aachen University, Institute of Flight System Dynamics (Demonstration Coordination)
- City of Aachen (representing the MAHHL-Urban Air Mobility Initiative)
- Droniq (U-Space Service Provider / USSP)
- Unifly (Unmanned Traffic Management software)
- TUDelft, MAVlab (AED Medical drone and Detect-And-Avoid)
- INVOLI (Real time air traffic awareness)
- Future Needs Management Consulting (Urban Air Mobility indicators for Smart Cities)
- Skeyes (Air Traffic Control / ATC)
- SkeyDrone (U-Space Service Provider / USSP)
- SABCA (X8 medical transport drone)
- eHang (Passenger eVTOL)
- HyFly (Hydrogen fuel cell VTOL)
- NSX (Software platform integrator)
- AgentFly Technologies (Flight simulation)
- Hellenic U-Space Institute (U-space services simulation)
Over the following months project news, publications and outputs will be available on the official project webpage at www.safir-med.eu and distributed via the project social media channels on LinkedIn and Twitter @SAFIRmedEU. For more on U-space, visit www.sesarju.eu/uspace.
The project has received recognition and funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 101017701 under the topic “SESAR-VLD2-03-2020: U-space capabilities and services to enable Urban Air Mobility”.
