In the last week of August, in the Aviation Education Centre in Jasionka, tests were conducted within the Enhanced RPAS Automation (ERA) project. The aim of the project is to enable unmanned aircraft to operate in unsegregated European airspace. ERA is an ad-hoc project of the European Defence Agency. It involves 16 partners from five countries: Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Sweden. The leader of the project is the German Airbus Defence and Space, while the leader of the demonstration and verification stage (Work Package – “Demonstration & Verification”) is the Rzeszów University of Technology.
The integration of automatic taxiing systems for unmanned aerial vehicles is now coming to an end. During the last functional tests, the system operation was checked in manual, semi-automatic (ground station control) and manual mode. In particular, executive systems, belt and obstacle markings and taxiing systems were tested according to the planned route.
In addition to the automatic taxiing system, the ERA project also includes the development of automatic take-off and landing systems and standards in cooperation with the European Organisation for Civil Aviation Equipment (EUROCAE).
The team of Łukasiewicz Research Network – Institute of Aviation in the ERA project is involved in the construction of the automatic taxiing system demonstrator on the research platform – Czajka MP-02 experimental plane, belonging to the institute.
Photo: Katarzyna Nowosielska-Augustyniak
