Airbus Unmanned Traffic Management
Airbus Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) is building digital air traffic management solutions for the next age of aviation. Airbus UTM teams design, develop and build the enabling infrastructure necessary to allow existing aircraft to continue operating in lower airspace and future vehicles, including delivery drones and air taxis, to safely enter and share our future skies.
Joint airspace management for safe future airspace
In the future, we will see not hundreds but thousands of aircraft populating our lower airspace, including traditional helicopters and new entrants such as delivery drones and air taxis, also known as electrical vertical take-off and landing vehicles (eVTOLs).
To safely manage all these air vehicles our joint airspace will need a scalable approach to air traffic management (ATM).
Airbus’ Unmanned Traffic Management believes UTM is a fundamental enabler to digitise ATM and realise the vision of an integrated, accessible airspace supporting a wide range of new vehicles and operations globally.
The Airbus UTM teams work to:
- Determine the safest, most effective architecture for unmanned traffic management through research, simulation and industry collaboration.
- Tap into Airbus’ decades-long history of technological excellence in aviation and expand on the already-established relationships with the regulatory and industry organisations critical to successfully deploying a comprehensive unmanned traffic management framework.
- Collaborate with regulators, manufacturers, service providers and mobility end users to establish a common understanding of tomorrow’s airspace.
- Deploy UTM services for flight authorisation and authoritative data using Airbus’ safe and secure UTM Platform.
- Provide customers with design and analysis support to help them to evaluate safe practices, understand current airspace usage, analyse risk and propose new airspace structures.
The 6 core principles to Airbus UTM deployment
Scalable
Safe
Secure
Future-proof
Interoperable
Sustainable
The 4 main pillars to Airbus’ UTM approach
The Airbus UTM main pillars are grounded in the domains of digital services, the development of an airspace digital twin, the building of enabling digital platforms and research and analysis.
Digital Services
Airbus UTM digital services provide authoritative data and information services to customers and external partners and ensure the safety and efficiency of the global airspace.
Digital Platform
The platform introduces digitisation into the global airspace and allows a high level of security, reliability and performance for UTM digital services customers and external partners.
Airspace Digital Twin
The airspace digital twin allows Airbus UTM and its customers to verify and validate a concept of operations document, data and technologies to prepare for safety critical use cases and the implementation of Airbus UTM digital services for customers and external partners.
Research & Analysis
Research work into connectivity, safety, fairness and testing at the Airbus UTM lab provides the crucial intelligence for standardisation and regulations.
