COMP4DRONES

Conducting drone project demonstrations is a valuable precursor to seeing a broader application of drones in various industrial environments. It also contributes to setting precise regulatory requirements for safe drone and UAV flights.

Opportunities afforded by drones and UAVs significantly exceed those of manned aircrafts. Unmanned flight technologies are more environmentally friendly and economically viable. Thus they decrease risks to human safety by carrying out various operations without direct human participation, such as inspection, maintenance, and overall replacing humans for high-risk work. However, the drone industry often faces limitations in its development due to a lack of high-quality interoperable technologies – without these they are not considered safe. This highlights a need to develop hardware, software, and communication solutions that ensure drones’ safety to enable autonomous flight.

COMP4DRONES is a European R&D project uniting a consortium of 50 partners from 8 countries. The main focus of the project is to develop advanced transportation services based on drone technology and artificial intelligence. 

Additionally, the project aims to deliver a holistically designed ecosystem supporting innovations within the industry. The COMP4DRONES project’s objectives include increasing drones’ safety and autonomy, reducing the complexity of drone operation verification efforts, easing the incorporation of embedded drone systems, and more.

To safeguard the quality of innovative solutions, demonstration and authorization processes are crucial. As one of the COMP4DRONES project partners, LMT leads the development of a demonstration in cooperation with the pan-European rail network, Rail Baltica. 

LMT’s demonstration focuses on the deployment of autonomous railway infrastructure monitoring accomplished by drones. Such a demonstration will allow further elaboration on the concept of drones as a service. 

Incorporating drone monitoring in railway construction and maintenance efforts will create the necessary test environment to deepen the understanding of how drones can contribute to closed transportation infrastructure environments. The autonomous drone monitoring process will be carried out through a cellular network, showing the possibilities of 4G/5G for UAVs. 

Participation in the COMP4DRONES project brings LMT closer to exhibiting the mobile network as a crucial infrastructure for the security of unmanned aircraft flights. LMT aims to strengthen the role of a cellular network in the drone ecosystem, and participation in demonstrations and R&D projects on a European level is significant in achieving the objective. 

For more information, please contact us directly or visit https://www.comp4drones.eu/.