The ERICA (“Enable RPAS Insertion in Controlled Airspace“) project, funded by the SESAR Joint Undertaking, organised a webinar to present its work on the integration of remotely piloted aerial systems (RPAS) in instrument flights rules (IFR) traffic in class A to C airspace.

The ERICA project, also known as Project 13, is a European Research Project funded by the European Commission through the SESAR Joint Undertaking, aimed at the insertion of Remotely-Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) into the Airspace Class A-C. The project started on December 2019 and will end on March 2023, with a consortium of twenty active partners that includes Industry, Air Navigation Service Providers, Research Centers and Eurocontrol, led by Leonardo.

The workshop focussed on “accommodation”, one of the three main activities foresee in the project, whose aim is the insertion of RPAS into the non-segregated airspace in the short-medium time. The other two activities address the integration of RPAS in the long-time timeframe, and the Detect & Avoid technology.

The workshop was intended to share the solutions under development and collect feedbacks from the audience, to achieve the widest acceptance from stakeholders and include their views in the solution development. The audience consisted in representatives from the Air Navigation Service Providers, military forces, pilots’ associations and the network manager (Eurocontrol).

To this aim, the workshop was organized in two sessions.  In the morning session, after an introductory remark given by Ermanno Girardelli, ERICA Project Coordinator, by Leonardo, Oliva Nunez, ATM Expert by SESAR JU, introduced the theme of “accommodation” and its role to ensure that the initial demand for RPAS insertion be managed with safety as a priority. Then, Cedric D’Silva Solution 115 Technical Leader, by Thales, provided an exhaustive presentation about the accommodation concept, the approach pursued in the project for responding to short-term user needs and he illustrated the use cases for which procedures are in progress.

In the afternoon session, all participants were involved in very fruitful debate, following the presentation of the RPAS accommodation use cases and the detailed procedures, which demonstrated  that the workshop successfully achieved its objectives.