How a start-up wants to set up air traffic control for drones

"Cargo drones and air taxis are seen as future markets. To prevent collision, the Frankfurt start-up ¬Droniq is planning to set up a new flight control system.

Nothing worked at Frankfurt Airport for three hours. Planes were diverted, take-offs and landings postponed, and in the end some even had to take off during the normal night's rest. And all because a drone had been spotted in the airspace of the airport. The incident a year ago was one of the most serious incidents of this type to date, but not the only one. Unmanned and remote-controlled aircraft are crossing the airspace of passenger aircraft more and more frequently. At the same time, drones – unmanned, helicopter-like and mostly battery-powered VTOL aircraft – are no longer just a popular toy for photographers and videographers. Companies like Wingcopter from Weiterstadt or Volocopter from Bruchsal want to use them to transport packages over longer distances in the medium term. The pharmaceutical company Merck has already tested this between the plants in Darmstadt and Gernsheim for medical transport.

"The drone is becoming a tool, it's no longer a toy," confirms Jan-Eric Putze, a former pilot and now Managing Director of the Frankfurt-based company Droniq. "And we want to help make it possible to use drones economically." His start-up, based at the Frankfurt television tower known as "Spargel", wants to ensure that the drones do not collide with each other or with other aircraft. Droniq wants to set up a kind of air traffic control for unmanned missiles. That's not unrealistic, because behind the three-year-old start-up with 22 employees are two big industry experts: Deutsche Flugsicherung, which holds 51 percent of Droniq, and Deutsche Telekom.

Define your own flight corridors

And only on Wednesday, Droniq co-founded an Air Mobility Initiative that aims to accelerate the electrification of air traffic. Its members include Airbus, Deutsche Bahn, Diehl Aerospace, the operating company of Munich Airport and the city of Ingolstadt. It is funded by the state of Bavaria and the federal government with a total of 41 million euros. In the initiative, Droniq is in charge of "air traffic management", one of the three task areas that the initiative has set itself.

In principle, the start-up wants to convert drones into flying smartphones. To do this, they are equipped with an LTE transmitter about the size of a matchbox and a SIM card, which a drone uses to dial into the Telekom mobile network and then continuously transmits its current position. The data flows into Droniq's traffic management system, which shows users the positions and flight routes of all aircraft via app or software. In addition, certain areas such as airports can be blocked for overflights and the drones can be guided around them via software control. The advantage would be that with such a system, each individual flight route would no longer have to be approved separately. Rather, separate flight corridors would be defined for drones, so-called U-spaces, in which unmanned aircraft can operate safely under supervision.

Droniq tested the concept in the port of Hamburg last year, funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport. For a total of seven months, processes and rules were examined and test flights were carried out to see whether the theory of the traffic management system works in practice. The exchange of data via the fast 5G wireless network is said to have worked largely automatically and without delay. A whole range of scenarios were tested, for example how to coordinate several drone flights in parallel, or how pilots react when a helicopter suddenly appears in the test field.

The pilot test should also provide insights into how the federal government will regulate U-Spaces in the future. An EU regulation from last year stipulates that from January 2023 such special flight corridors can be set up for larger drones - small hobby devices that weigh less than 250 grams are exempt from the regulation. Flights will continue to be possible outside of the U-spaces, but an operating license must then be obtained for each of these. According to Hamburg-based Droniq project manager Juliane Lang, U-spaces make sense especially around airports, as well as over densely populated areas and industrial areas.

Lots of practical questions to be answered

However, it is still unclear where the legislature will allow these drone zones, how specifically they will be regulated and which institutions and companies will take on which tasks. The Federal Ministry of Transport is currently working on the implementation of the EU regulation, the Hamburg pilot test has provided "a blueprint" for this, according to Berlin, but there are still a lot of practical questions to be clarified. For example, how big can the U-spaces be and up to what flight altitude do they go - and is the range of the mobile phone masts sufficient for this? The federal government must also coordinate the regulation with the federal states, since the U-Spaces would have to be set up via their municipalities. It will take a while, they say. At the end of the year, a draft for a legal reform or new regulation should be available.

However, Droniq boss Putze does not expect commercial drones to take off en masse at the beginning of 2023. At the moment, he explains, the drones cannot be certified for regular use at all, because there are no legally regulated processes for this either. Droniq is therefore currently planning another two-year pilot project in Bavaria, in which the integration of manned and unmanned air traffic will be tested.

"Everything we do here is new territory for everyone," says Droniq boss Putze. In addition, the users were still missing. "Companies are simply scared and don't yet know what to expect," says Putze. Some companies already see the added value, for example for checking high-voltage lines, for plant security or for medical transport. But the industry now needs security from the legislature so that it can invest, emphasizes the founder.

Germany has achieved a very good position in drone technology, there are many innovative companies in this field. Now, Putze once again appeals to politicians, everything must be done to ensure that other countries do not overtake them - even if regulation in a federal state is not easy. According to the entrepreneur, you can't arrange everything in advance, but have to take small steps and show that drones work in U-Spaces in order to then gain more experience. "I'm just saying: fly, fly, fly.""