Emerging U-Space and UAM concepts envisage a new generation of small, highly manoeuvrable, and highly automated aircraft operating at low altitude, alongside existing helicopter and general aviation users. Coordination & deconfliction of large numbers of such aircraft operating in primarily urban environments requires new Communications, Navigation, and Surveillance (CNS) infrastructure to ensure safety of passengers, the public, and other stakeholders while supporting complex low-altitude operations. Leveraging the scalable waveforms of 5G New Radio (NR), modern IP-based software-defined networking, and distributed computing capabilities, ANTENNAE (dAta driveN cosT-Effective 5G iNtegrated CommuNication, Navigation, and Surveillance (CNS)-as-A-ServicE) proposes a flexible and resilient integrated CNS-as-a-Service model supporting both low-altitude piloted and U-Space operations, and builds upon the mature and growing family of 3GPP 5G standards including system architecture, deployment models, and commercial implementations. ANTENNAE will apply advanced modelling to validate the applicability of 3GPP standards to deliver low-altitude CNS functions, including the full range of aeronautical data services (through 5G eMBB & URLLC), navigation (through 5G-based A-PNT), and surveillance (through emerging A-SUR and joint communication & sensing (JCS) concepts). ANTENNAE will examine the architectural benefits of established 5G deployment models for providing distributed data services, network resilience, and scalability. ANTENNAE will also look to the future of the 3GPP standards by examining technologies under development in the 3GPP working groups for beyond 5G ("6G”) services. Finally, ANTENNAE will conduct a rigorous quantitative techno-economic analysis informed by these engineering models to assess the financial feasibility of deploying a scalable integrated CNS-as-a-Service through a 5G access network, with comparison to alternative technological approaches.

Advances in biomedical science, data science, engineering, and technology are leading to high-pace innovation with potential to transform healthcare practices towards improved quality of life for citizens in urban and rural environments. This can be the case of drones supporting medical and healthcare services, whose implementation is expected to bring tangible benefits in short term. However, despite drones have lived significant technological advances and the evolution of the pillars of the regulatory framework, the disruptiveness that their applications bring does not match the readiness of market and non-aviation sectors as well as the readiness and capacity of local authorities. To address this well-known issue, many stakeholders have recognised the urgent need to evolve from sandbox operational project settings to living labs settings as a way to close the gap and involve all the real-life stakeholders. Therefore, there is a need for transition to the establishment of living labs to demonstrate to actors (market and citizens) the real-life improvements of drone-aided medical services. DALi Lab looks for developing detailed requirements for setting up the engagement and governance structure of living labs for drone-aided medical services. This will be achieved designing an action plan to set up a living lab during the project, including testing and validation of drone solutions (real flights and simulations) for medical services for a specific use case. At the end of the project, we will be able to provide guidance on how to develop living labs for drone-aided medical services by integrating drones on medical operations while safeguarding societal acceptance/embracement, tradeoffs and concerns about safety and security, compliance with medical protocols and the protection of individuals/patients as well as privacy and sustainability dimensions (e.g. environmental nuisance, social impacts, economic benefits.

Growing challenges are identified during the last years in both passenger and freight mobility, such as urbanization trends, the increasing complexity of stakeholder scene, e-commerce, rising fragmentation of freight transport. Despite the various technical challenges and shortcomings, current governance and regulatory systems have proven so far inadequate, dealing with the passengers and freight transport systems as independent -and thus disconnected- sectors while integration between passenger and freight transport has been a subject of debate in the transport community over the last years with a peak coming after the recent Covid19 crisis. DELPHI focuses on the strategic dimension of integrating passenger and freight transport in a single system aiming to deliver the enablers -both on technical and governance/regulatory level, towards a federated network of platforms for multimodal passenger and freight transport, capable of sharing in a seamless and secure manner, cross-sectoral, multi-modal passenger and freight transport data, as well as traffic management systems information. Moreover, DELPHI will utilise novel and ultra-efficient methodologies for traffic monitoring such as UAS-powered monitoring, multi-/inter-modal optimisation, AI/ML-powered algorithms and frameworks, and will exploit diverse modes for hybrid passenger and freight transport in different ecosystem types. To achieve its maximum potential, utmost interoperability and best optimisation results, DELPHI’s digital framework and transversal tools will be validated in the context of 4 pilots with complementary requirements and features.

The GOF2.0 Integrated Urban Airspace VLD (GOF2.0) very large demonstration project will safely, securely, and sustainably demonstrate operational validity of serving combined UAS, eVTOL and manned operations in a unified, dense urban airspace using current ATM and U-space services and systems. Both ATM and U-space communities depend extensively on the provision of timely, relevant, accurate and quality-assured digital information to collaborate and make informed decisions. The demonstrations focus on validation of the GOF 2.0 architecture for highly automated real-time separation assurance in dense air space including precision weather and telecom networks for air-ground communication and will significantly contribute to understanding how the safe integration of UAM and other commercial drone operations into ATM Airspace without degrading safety, security or disrupting current airspace operations can be implemented.