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Greening the future: new CORUS-XUAM project will see EUROCONTROL coordinate a series of Europe-wide urban air mobility demonstrations

28 January 2021

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12 January 2021 saw CORUS-XUAM, a very large demonstration project set up to gather research expertise and know-how on air traffic management (ATM), unmanned aircraft systems and urban air mobility (UAM), kick off at a meeting attended by more than 70 experts and representatives of the SESAR Joint Undertaking.

Managed by the SESAR Joint Undertaking and funded within the framework of Horizon Europe 2020, CORUS-XUAM – the Concept of Operations for euRopean U-space Services - eXtension for Urban Air Mobility, to give it its full name – is a two-year project that will define and test the required U-space services, capabilities and solutions needed for UAM to operate safely and efficiently. The EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre in Brétigny, France is coordinating the project which comprises 19 partners and 11 related third parties, namely Groupe Aéroports de Paris, AOPA UK, ASLOGIC, DFS, DLR, Droniq GmbH, DSNA, ENAIRE, ENAV, HEMAV, INDRA, LFV Group, NATS, Pipistrel VS, SkeyDrone, Unifly nv, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Volocopter, M3 Systems, Ehang Holding GmbH, Hologarde, CRIDA, D-FLIGHT, NAIS, DTA, IBG, Linköping University, Citymesh, SABCA.

With large-scale live UAM demos to be hosted by Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK, CORUS-XUAM looks to tackle the key question for UAM: how can more people and packages move in and around cities – through point-to-point flights, bypassing ground congestion and with shorter journey times, while meeting the goal of decarbonising cities and offering smart and sustainable mobility solutions?

The project aims to highlight the importance of U-space solutions for integrated operations that require mutual traffic situational awareness. It will demonstrate integrated operations of both manned and unmanned aircraft employing advanced U-space services such as digital data exchange in urban, suburban and inter-city scenarios, as well as in and near airspaces and airports under ATM. The project will also explore ways to facilitate a proper interface with ATM/ANS (air navigation services), with a particular focus on airport operations.

As a first step, CORUS-XUAM will focus on consolidating the U-space CONOPS and creating reference demo scenarios with advanced U-space services to enable UAM operations. A project demonstration or validation plan will be developed to capitalise on the challenging demonstration campaigns that will be carried out in participating countries. These demonstrations will showcase a mix of manned and unmanned operations in challenging environments, such as in the vicinity of airports and other critical infrastructures such as ports, as well as very low-level operations in urban, sub-urban and inter-urban areas.

Webinar

4 February 2021

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A project advisory board with a broad range of stakeholders as well as a larger U-space community network will be set up to help the consortium consolidate the proposed U-space services and relevant CONOPS. Preparatory work and flight trials will be performed throughout 2021 and 2022. The insights and recommendations will be consolidated in a final report on early U-space solutions for UAM deployment in late 2022, and are also expected to be used by regulatory authorities.

Learn more about CORUS-XUAM

Get all the details around this very large-scale demonstration (VLD) project.

This project has received funding from the SESAR Joint Undertaking under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N^o101017682.