AstraUTM in Finland: Moving Closer to Urban Air Mobility and Advanced Operations

AstraUTM Deploys UTM in Finland

by DRONELIFE Staff Writer Ian M. Crosby

Leading UTM solutions provider AstraUTM has announced its second deployment in Finland as a part of the DROLO USP Project for the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. AstraUTM will make use of a USSP instance for the project, with the goal of integrating the system with Fintraffic ANS’s CIS solution.

“We are living in exciting times in Urban Air Mobility development in Europe and in Finland, and the now delivered AstraUTM constitutes one of the most important pieces to our U-Space puzzle. The Drolo consortium is thrilled to now be able to commence their advanced test flight programme on their way to their ultimate goal of creating sustainable business from urban airspace.” said VTT’s Dr. Petri Mononen, coordinator of the Drolo co-innovation initiative.

The project’s purpose is to allow drone systems, products and services to support future applications, as well as to set in place a Finnish Drolo ecosystem to increase development. Drolo’s Living Lab test environment in the Oulu region provides variable flight environments and resources, including a medium-sized international airport, seaport, inhabited island, medium-sized city center and 5G development center.

“The implementation will facilitate advanced demonstrations of BVLOS use cases and real-time telemetry exchange over the 4G/5G cellular network,” said AstraUTM CCO Ayhan Kamil. “We are particularly eager to demonstrate advanced Uspace capabilities such as Dynamic Rerouting and automated Flight Planning as part of this project.”

Drolo works to create business opportunities for partially or fully automated drone concepts that can be employed for the surveillance, logistics and drone operator industries, as well as software technology, platform technology and network technology.

AstraUTM has operations across 5 continents, which range from national ANSP level deployments to enterprise and operator level UTM services.

Read more about Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) Systems:

• RTM, UTM: Drone Traffic Management is Complex; Canadian Energy UTM Project Shows How it Works (VIDEO)
• NUAIR Issues UTM RFI: Long Term Development of the New York Drone Corridor
• Beyond Working UTM: How Supplementary Services Could Benefit the Industry
• What Do We Need to Implement UTM? From the (Virtual) Floor at InterDrone

Ian attended Dominican University of California, where he received a BA in English in 2019. With a lifelong passion for writing and storytelling and a keen interest in technology, he is now contributing to DroneLife as a staff writer.