Drones and Robots for
Ecologically Sustainable Societies project(DRESS project)

Figure 1 : Interconnection Test Field (left) and Traffic Management Room (right)

1. Overview

 The National Institute of New Energy and Industrial Technology Development (NEDO) is advancing a major project※1 to develop a drone traffic management system for safe flight of drones by multiple operators in the same airspace and to conduct demonstration tests※ 2 of a traffic management system at the "Fukushima Robot Test Field※ 3" (located in Namie-cho, Minamisoma-shi, Fukushima Prefecture). In the future, NEDO aims to enable all operators to operate drones safely and with peace of mind, with an eye toward making proposals to international standards.
 In the traffic management system, drone operators can share information on the flight plan of the drone, real-time flight conditions, airspace safety, such as prohibited airspace, with other drone operators by connecting the Traffic Management Function they operate to the Integrated Traffic Management function and Information Provision Function.
 Recently, a server was installed in the operations control center of the Fukushima Robot Test Field to provide integrated traffic management functions to enable multiple drone operators to share information. The server went live on August 30, 2019. In addition, rules were developed for the use of APIs※ 4 for the drone traffic management system. This enabled ordinary drone operators not participating in the NEDO Project to access the server through APIs, and established an interconnection test environment with the drone traffic management system.※ 5

 NEDO, NEC, NTT DATA, Hitachi, Zenrin, Japan Meteorological Association, and JAXA conducted interconnection tests of the drone traffic management system in the Fukushima Robot Test Field in cooperation with Fukushima Prefecture, Minamisoma City, and the Fukushima Innovation Coast Framework Promotion Organization.
 In this connection test, seventeen NEDO Project participants and twelve ordinary operators not affiliated with the NEDO Project participated. Looking to the future of wider deployment of drones in the 2020s, testing included airspace densities of 100 flights per square kilometer per hour.
 This interconnection test was based on two agreements: Cooperation Agreement※ 6 on Demonstration of Robot Drones concluded by NEDO and Fukushima Prefecture on November 22, 2017, and the Cooperation Agreement※ 7 on Human Resources Development for Robots using the Fukushima Robot Test Field concluded by NEDO and Minamisoma City on April 10, 2019.

Figure 2 : Flight Area Map (Left: Fukushima RTF, Right: Coast Area)

Figure 3 : Comparison with February 2019 tests

 Within the traffic management system, the Traffic Management Function enables safe drone operations even when multiple operators fly in the same airspace by using information sharing provided by an Integrated Traffic Management Function. In addition, operators can obtain the information necessary to operate drones using map information and weather information provided by the Information Provision Function.
 In the October interconnection test, the Integrated Traffic Management Function and the Information Provision Function were connected via a network so that general drone operators not involved in the NEDO Project could participate. To improve the security of the network, firewalls and intrusion detection systems (IDS) were installed, authentication keys were distributed to the providers connecting, permitting only approved operators to connect. In addition, managing flight plans and flight conditions assuming multiple simultaneous drone use cases such as multiple drone weather observation, and multi-drone formation flights for delivery.
 The NEDO Project also verified and evaluated the use of airspace and flight rules for the safe operation of these drones through traffic management simulations.

3. Interconnection test with the participation of ordinary drone operators

 In this interconnection test, drone operators who were not part of the NEDO Project participated. These ordinary drone operators were as follows. (10 flight test implementation teams, 12 operators, 23 drones)

(random order)

 The NEDO Project supported these ordinary operators to connect to the APIs. The outcomes of flight plan applications and approvals/denials were provided as a Web service, making it possible to submit the area and time of a flight through an Internet browser. In addition, the NEDO Project provided flight control devices onboard the drones to report the position and speed of drones to the traffic management system during flight.
 In the future, the NEDO Project plans to improve the user interface so that many more ordinary operators can easily participate in interconnection tests.

4. Major Research Results on Individual Technologies of NEDO Project Members

 In this interconnection test, the following NEDO Project members participated. (11 flight test implementation teams, 17 operators, 23 drones)

(random order)

The results of this interconnect test on individual technologies were as follows.

Figure 4 : Drone Traffic Situational Awareness Display

5. Future Plans

 NEDO, NEC Corporation, NTT DATA Corporation, Hitachi, Ltd., ZENRIN CO., and Japan Meteorological Association will operate a traffic management system and verify the functions of the traffic management system by February 2020.

＜Annotations＞