Metropolis II

A unified approach to airspace design and separation management
for U-space

About the projectAbout the U-Space

U-Space Roadmap

Source: U-space blueprint
https://www.sesarju.eu/u-space-blueprint

U1 Foundation

Provide e-registration, e-identification and geofencing.

U2 Initial

Support the management of drone operations and may include flight planning, flight approval, tracking, airspace dynamic information, and procedural interfaces with air traffic control.

U3 Advanced

Support more complex operations in dense areas and may include capacity management and assistance for conflict detection. Indeed, the availability of automated ‘detect and avoid’ (DAA) functionalities, in addition to more reliable means of communication, will lead to a significant increase of operations in all environments.

U4 Full

Particularly services offering integrated interfaces with manned aviation, support the full operational capability of U-space and will rely on very high level of automation, connectivity and digitalisation for both the drone and the U-space system.

About the project

Metropolis 2 is a project that responds to SESAR-JU (Single European Sky ATM Research Joint Undertaking) necessity of providing concrete solutions to enable air traffic in high-density urban environments. As the european research market is drifting towards U3/U4 services, the project consolidates the results from U1/U2 services and provides a realistic foundation for future Urban Air Mobility (UAM). It is one of the few projects that is working with U4 services.

A main focus is given to develop solutions to strategic deconfliction, tactical deconfliction and dynamic capacity management. The project is being developed by a consortium of eight institutions with wide experience in U-Space research activities while the outcome concepts and results will contribute to enable safe and efficient U-Space operations in urban environments. Metropolis 2 lies within the EU-2020 Research and Innovation programme.

Metropolis 2 Specific Objectives
  1. Extend the segmentation and alignment principles of geovectoring to an operational concept for airspace rules to enable high-capacity urban airspace.

  2. Develop a unified design approach to the management of traffic in high-density urban airspace on all timescales, based on the segmentation and alignment principles of geovectoring, in combination with flight planning and detect and avoid paradigms that are designed to leverage the alignment principles from geovectoring, to define robust and efficient flight plans, as well as safe and compliant resolution strategies, which are suitable for operation in a densely-used airspace.

  3. Determine the benefits and drawbacks of separation management paradigms with different approaches to who acts as separator: the drone, the U-space service, or a combination thereof, and different combinations of procedural and tactical separation.

  4. Investigate a priority-based integration of manned aviation in urban (drone-only) airspace that robustly integrates with airspace rules and separation provision, such that safety for manned flight is guaranteed, while minimizing degradation of capacity.

  5. Demonstrate the final concept coming out of the Metropolis 2 project in a real-world validation.

Consortium

Delft University of Technology

Coordinator
Delft University of Technology is the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive technical university in the Netherlands.

Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile ENAC

ENAC is internationally recognized as the leading aviation university in Europe, providing a broad range of training, studies and research activities.

NTT DATA Spain S.L.U.

NTT DATA Company is a multinational consulting firm that offers business and strategic solutions, development and maintenance of technological applications and outsourcing services.

Linkoping university

Linköping University is Sweden’s fifth largest university. The work in the project will be performed at the division of Communications and Transport Systems.

The Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre

The Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR) is the national research centre in the Netherlands for identifying, developing and applying advanced technological knowledge in the area of aerospace.

Unifly

Unifly is the global leading provider of Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) technology. Unifly’s award winning UTM platform is already in use all over the world.

Univ. of Patras AML/UoP

Applied Mechanics Laboratory (AML) is in operation since 1980. It is part of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics, University of Patras (UoP).

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This project has received funding from the SESAR Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 892928.

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