Please read through the sessions and then make your selection in the form below. We look forward to your participation!

Breakout round 1 (12:30 – 13:15)

Session 1 (12:30 – 13:15)
Rule Extraction for Drone Legislation

Description: In this joint talk by Maastricht University and Nalantis, we explain our approach of extracting information from legal texts on Urban Air Mobility, which may be used for identifying relevant laws, applicable rights, duties, and prohibitions for different types of actors involved, and for compliance checking. We report on the final results of our work in Flying Forward 2020 which includes a framework to extract and generate rules and methods to convert natural language sentences to actionable instructions for drones or their operators.In this session, we provide a quick system demonstration, and discuss the challenges we face in deploying this at a larger scale, or in different domains.

Speakers:
University of Maastricht, Netherlands (Flying Forward 2020 project)
NALANTIS, Belgium  (Flying Forward 2020 project)
Session 2 (12:30 – 13:15)
Technical innovations

Description: During the past 3 years, notably AURORA and FF2020 partners have developed innovations to advance the technical capabilities of aerial drones. Sensors and systems  to improve detect & avoid capabilities, autonomous control systems for drones,  interoperability and shared understanding of a scene between edges are some of the research topics and outcomes that will be discussed and debated during this session.

Speakers:
University of Florence, IT (AURORA project)
Robodrone Industries, CZ (AURORA project)
Verses, NL (Flying Forward 2020 project)
SEAL AERONAUTICA, Spain (AURORA project)
Session 3 (12:30 – 13:15)
Sustainability in UAM

Description: Sustainability aspects of drones are a highly relevant but not yet widely researched topic in the Urban Air Mobility field. The AURORA project will talk about their work done on Sustainable Mobility indicators for UAM and how they were applied during  AURORA’s virtual and real life use cases. From the AiRMOUR side, some surprising findings on the CO2 emissions from UAM operations from cradle to grave will be presented as well as a quantitative model for life cycle emissions from construction, ground infra and flight operations for both small UAS and air taxis.

Speakers:
Ghent University, Belgium (AURORA project)
Robots Expert, Finland (AiRMOUR project)
SERENDIPITY,  Netherlands (Flying Forward 2020 project)

Breakout Round 2 (14:30 – 15:15)

Breakout session 4 (14:30 – 15:15)
Emergency drone services

Description: One of the most obvious benefits of drones is their speed and ability to circumvent traffic jams, bodies of water or other physical barriers that may hinder ground transport. This is why drones are suitable to deliver (urgent) medical goods between medical facilities especially where existing logistics solutions face operational or organisational challenges. Also, drones may be used to gather data for other professionals involved in the acute care chain. AiRMOUR had its focus specifically on emergency medical services. Also AURORA covered use cases relevant to first responders. The projects will present and discuss project outcomes and lessons with each other and with the audience, in relation to both UAVs and eVTOLS.

Speakers:
University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands (AiRMOUR project)
Regionalmanagement Northern Hesse, Germany (AiRMOUR project)
University of Pisa, Italy (AURORA project)
Robodrone Industries, Czech Republic (AURORA project)
Breakout session 5 (14:30 – 15:15)
Public engagement and social acceptance

Description: Social embracement is often mentioned as a make-or-break factor for scaling drone operations. Both AiRMOUR and AURORA did significant and large-scale work on this topic. The different use cases and numbers of stakeholders reached are among the largest in Europe. Results of the work will be shared in a nutshell, with room for debate on methods, gaps, challenges and next steps.

Speakers:
LuxMobility, Luxembourg (AiRMOUR project)
European Passenger Federation, Belgium (AURORA project)
Living Lab ZARAGOZA, Spain (Flying Forward 2020 project)
Breakout session 6 (14:30 – 15:15) 
Simulations: how simulations of real life use cases serves UAM challenges

Description: Simulations and virtualisations can be extremely helpful to test different scenarios and evaluate strategies for the use of drones in a controlled environment. This can save time and money, ensure safety, and improve efficiency. In this session, simulations on response times from AiRMOUR will be discussed, comparing the performance of eVTOLs to ground-based emergency medical vehicles. Can eVTOLs really provide a faster and more efficient way to transport patients to hospitals than ground-based EMS vehicles? In addition, AURORA’s virtual environment that simulates the logistics of urgent medical care is explained. What kind of local data and input parameters are crucial.

Speakers:
Siemens, France (AURORA project)
University of Applied Sciences Kempten, Germany (AiRMOUR project)
University of Pisa, Italy (AURORA project)
NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, Norway (AiRMOUR project)

Breakout Round 3 (15:30 – 16:15)

Session 7 (15:30 – 16:15)
Safe Unmanned Aircraft operations

Description: This session dives into safety aspects of drones. Partners from AiRMOUR and AURORA will present and discuss their work on supporting technologies that can increase safety levels, autonomous flight capabilities and intelligent path planning, safe landing site detection also in case of degraded GNSS conditions as well as mitigation measures for air and ground risks.

Speakers:
NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, Norway (AiRMOUR project)
SEAL AERONAUTICA, Spain (AURORA project)
Thales (AURORA project)
LFV Swedish Civil Aviation Administration, Sweden (AiRMOUR project)
Session 8 (15:30 – 16:15)
Economic considerations, business models and procurement of UAM services

Description: This panel session discusses the direct and indirect costs associated with UAM, attractiveness and maturity of UAM business models compared to alternatives and will also cover how organisations can assess their maturity level in terms of business models, purchasing needs, and technology suppliers. Based on the research carried out in AiRMOUR and Flying Forward 2020, the audience will hear about various Business Model Canvasses for emergency medical services, about the Digital Toolbox for the procurement of UAM services and about the economic feasibility of integrating UAM into existing EMS systems. The panellists will also discuss challenges, remaining research gaps as well as actionable insights for UAM adoption.

Speakers:
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland (AiRMOUR project)
Tartu Science Park, Estonia (Flying Forward 2020 project)
Serendipity, Netherlands (Flying Forward 2020 project)
LuxMobility, Luxembourg (AiRMOUR project)
Session 9 (15:30 – 16:15)
Regulations: UAS operations in Specific category – lessons learned from flights and Living Labs 

Description: This panel will discuss the regulatory framework for unmanned aircraft systems operations and what the flights and Living Labs from AiRMOUR, AURORA and Flying Forward have taught us. The panel will explore the impact of UAM on aviation regulation and the need for a pathway from innovation to viable services. Also a decision support tool to select the appropriate UAS operational category is part of the presentations. The audience will be engaged to discuss if regulations are sufficiently supporting UAS operations.

Speakers:
EuroUSC, Italy (Flying Forward 2020 project)
Robots Expert, Finland (AiRMOUR project)
Ghent University, Belgium (AURORA project)
LFV Swedish Civil Aviation Administration, Sweden (AiRMOUR project)