Remote sensing analysis of multi-spectral data captured from a UAV to identify the growing stages of heathland and Gorse areas. The information will be used by conservation land managers to better plan and manage protected areas.

Autonomous flight is a general purpose technology with enormous commercial potential. As a result a lot of resources are being put into solving for Logistics and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). We want to provide these companies with the world's most advanced solution for autonomous unmanned flight and we took the first steps in FFP2\. In FFP2 the consortium led by [sees.ai][0] has developed a technology that enables BVLOS flights on demand, at low altitude and close to obstacles. In our system the Pilot designs the mission; our UAS senses and maps the world in 3D using Lidars and Cameras, allowing it to fly autonomously close to and amongst infrastructure. The 3D map is sent in real-time to the pilot who supervises the mission remotely for safety. This technology provided the necessary safety and risk mitigations that allowed us to obtain the first authorisation for routine BVLOS approved by the CAA. Although the system is designed to work in any congested area (including urban) the authorisation is limited to a number of predefined industrial sites in which we will build our safe flight record. In FFP3 we are pushing the technology and our operational safety case to extend our current capabilities to: * Enable Atypical Airspace (AA) BVLOS inspection of assets in the public domain by: * Advancing the capabilities of our DAA (Detect and Avoid System) so it can detect vehicles and people on the ground and any approaching aircraft * Embedding our operations into the wider aviation ecosystem by integrating them into a commercial UTM system. * Developing a system that can provide comms between UAS and pilot in areas with poor or no 4G/5G coverage. * Leveraging our advanced spatial awareness and our integration into the aviation ecosystem to create a solid Concept of Operations that will allow us to obtain one of the world's first approvals for AA-BVLOS. * Enable a pilot to control multiple UAS, an important step towards increasing the efficiency and scalability of UAS operations. We will also be aiming to be one of the first companies to obtain regulatory authorisation to fly multiple UAS simultaneously in AA. With these advancements our consortium will be hoping to contribute to the BVLOS infrastructure of the future. At the end of the project we will have a number of systems that will be tried and tested and ready to be deployed regularly by our clients. [0]: http://sees.ai/

Autonomous flight is a general purpose technology with enormous commercial potential. As a result a lot of resources are being put into solving for Logistics and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). We want to provide these companies with the world's most advanced solution for autonomous unmanned flight and we took the first steps in FFP2\. In FFP2 the consortium led by [sees.ai][0] has developed a technology that enables BVLOS flights on demand, at low altitude and close to obstacles. In our system the Pilot designs the mission; our UAS senses and maps the world in 3D using Lidars and Cameras, allowing it to fly autonomously close to and amongst infrastructure. The 3D map is sent in real-time to the pilot who supervises the mission remotely for safety. This technology provided the necessary safety and risk mitigations that allowed us to obtain the first authorisation for routine BVLOS approved by the CAA. Although the system is designed to work in any congested area (including urban) the authorisation is limited to a number of predefined industrial sites in which we will build our safe flight record. In FFP3 we are pushing the technology and our operational safety case to extend our current capabilities to: * Enable Atypical Airspace (AA) BVLOS inspection of assets in the public domain by: * Advancing the capabilities of our DAA (Detect and Avoid System) so it can detect vehicles and people on the ground and any approaching aircraft * Embedding our operations into the wider aviation ecosystem by integrating them into a commercial UTM system. * Developing a system that can provide comms between UAS and pilot in areas with poor or no 4G/5G coverage. * Leveraging our advanced spatial awareness and our integration into the aviation ecosystem to create a solid Concept of Operations that will allow us to obtain one of the world's first approvals for AA-BVLOS. * Enable a pilot to control multiple UAS, an important step towards increasing the efficiency and scalability of UAS operations. We will also be aiming to be one of the first companies to obtain regulatory authorisation to fly multiple UAS simultaneously in AA. With these advancements our consortium will be hoping to contribute to the BVLOS infrastructure of the future. At the end of the project we will have a number of systems that will be tried and tested and ready to be deployed regularly by our clients. [0]: http://sees.ai/

This project aims to develop and validate the first aviation system capable of enabling commercial 'beyond visual line of sight' (BVLOS) drone services at scale alongside manned aviation, including complex missions in congested (e.g. urban and industrial environments). It will also enable drone service providers to benefit from economies of scale for the first time. The project will build a strong foundation from which we can safely extend later to address higher value use-cases such as aerial logistics and urban air mobility.

It's vitally important we keep our infrastructure, construction & industrial sites running. In 2018 construction provided 3m jobs and contributed £250 billion to the UK economy or 15% of UK GDP. More broadly, engineering enterprises employed 19% of the UK labour force and generated 23% of the UK's turnover. Against a backdrop of skills shortages costing UK businesses £1.7bn / year, the COVID-19 pandemic is making a bad situation worse - with additional labour shortages; reduced workforce efficiency; and planners unsure who will show up for work. This pandemic may continue for many more months, perhaps even years. As such, we urgently need to accelerate remote inspection and monitoring. This project aims to address this need. Conventional drone services are delivered under visual line of sight (VLOS) regulations. Scaling these services requires building a large team of drone pilots and managing their travel to/from mission sites. This approach is resource constrained, inconsistent and expensive - and as a result is very difficult to scale. In contrast, sees.ai's solution teams pilots in remote control rooms with highly-automated drones on the client site, to enable the remote execution of complex missions BVLOS. This concentration of resources in a control room significantly improves scalability (zero travel means fewer pilots required) and introduces economies of scale, scope and learning which result in improved quality, capability and cost. In the context of COVID-19 this project will help us return to normal operation, safety levels and quality control, as follows: 1\. By accelerating remote inspection & monitoring, this solution will reduce the number of site workers involved, freeing them for productive work. 2\. By providing office workers with better information at their desks, this solution will help them optimise build and maintenance work without needing to visit site. 3\. By reducing the number of people visiting site, this solution will help operators reduce infection risk which could potentially lead to site shutdown. Beyond COVID-19 the sees.ai solution represents the state-of-the-art in a long-term trend towards enabling remote inspection and monitoring - linked to the evolution of BIM, reality capture and the digital twin. Project partners include some of the UK's biggest users of drones today and some of the companies most likely to benefit from drones in the future. These companies see the value in aerial intelligence and see the sees.ai solution as a potential way to access it at the scale and quality required.