Visual Inspection of airspace for air traffic safety and SEcuRity

The emergence of a new market and new regulations for drones and aircraft in the lower airspace creates opportunities for a large ecosystem of Swedish industrial actors. However, drones also pose a risk to this market, where actors can intentionally or unintentionally disrupt or destroy.

Addressing security and facilitating the growth of the market is central to creating Swedish competitiveness in the area, with global opportunities. The VISER project (Visual Inspection of airspace for air traffic safety and SEcuRity) is a collaboration between SAAB and RISE where a cost-efficient system is developed and tested for monitoring the lower airspace at a regional level. The system is based on camera sensors and an AI model trained on combinations of acquired data and synthetic data. The system can detect, position and classify unknown aircrafts. Through sensor fusion towards U-space Service Providers, better situational awareness can be created, and anomalies can be detected and raised.

In future scenarios, similar systems could be used to provide large-scale security for future autonomous airports and drone logistics, as well as increased ability to detect non-communicative craft nearby restricted areas and nearby sensitive infrastructure.