Drone-based solutions for airport monitoring to improve airport safety

Luftfartsverket (LFV) has initialized a program with the vision of “The Autonomous Airport”. The first step was to establish a test site at Sundsvall and Örnsköldsvik Airports – currently under way. In order to support the vision for autonomous and remotely controlled airports and utilization of drones for the Swedish society, this project will develop drone solutions for automated operations at airports with the aim to minimize operational costs and environmental impacts, as well as to improve airport safety and resource efficiency. Airport surveillance such as border inspection is challenging and labor-intensive, especially for small airports. The project will emanate from the test site at Örnsköldsvik airport (OER) and will develop and demonstrate drone-based solutions for automatic airport surveillance. The major tasks include 1) use case identification and requirement analysis, 2) drone system investigation and prototyping, 3) drone communication solutions investigation and development for remote control and video streaming, 4) drone system demonstration at the airports.

This project serves as a first step to introduce drones in daily operations for airports. It will support OER airport as a pioneer test site for future airport automation, and for drone innovation in Swedish airports. The project will be supervised by LFV and Swedish Regional Airports and will consider the expansion to other small airports, as well as medium and large airports. While focusing on drone development, the project will also consider future integration of advanced intelligence. The knowledge will contribute to the society with e.g., automation techniques, policies, as well as business insights of drones in airports.