Aerospace & Defense Ecosystem: UAV/Drones

Submitted by Tedora Aibu on 02 July 2020

Summary of the European Alliance Against Coronavirus Daily Webinars on 25 June 2020 

On 26 June, the ECA session was dedicated to the Aerospace and Defense ecosystem and in particular to UAVs and drones. The speaker was expert Christiana Eisenberg from CURPAS Cluster Germany. Together with UAS Denmark and AEROSpace Valley, CURPAS cluster initiated the European Drones Cooperation (EDC), a cooperation to discuss and start mutually new projects.

The vision of this association is a common interest in contributing to the innovation and commercialization of drones technologies and usages in Europe. The common goals of the association are: (i) mutual activity, (ii) mutual orientation, (iii) mutual benchmarking, and an (iv) annual meeting. The main activities of EDC include the generation of regular videoconferences, an international calendar, and an already planned association meeting in 2020. They have submitted their first proposal for a Horizon2020 project, called InnoWin, which involved 16 clusters and 10 countries. Now it is possible to become a member of this recognized organization that has a strong community, a strong and active network and is oriented towards research.

With regard to COVID-19, the usage of drones in pandemic and crisis situation has potential as they can move in regions in lockdown -  to give  reports of the situation, to find people that are lost, or to transport goods. During the last months, it was possible to see how drones can be used to give information to individuals or to deliver water and food to population.

Krzysztof Krystowski from the Silesian Aviation Cluster underlined two messages:

  • it’s a very promising industry; especially for a future possibility to transport people;
  • it’s a very segmented sector; every country in Europe has some realities in drone industry. It is fundamental to connect and collaborate, eliminating the market dependence from China.

However, the speakers expressed the clear need for a regulation on a European level, as the Member State have very different frameworks for the use of UAVs.

A recording of the session is available here 

These are the complete minutes of the meeting:

20200625 ECA dailyminutes_v2.pdf

This is the presentation from the meeting: 

2020_06_09 Drohnenmeeting EDC.pdf

Find information on the previous meetings hereinformation on the upcoming agenda here.  

Photo by Karl Greif on Unsplash

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