Commercialisation of new applications for light unmanned aircraft

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Proof of market funding is sought for assessing the commercial viability of developing andoffering new services with Small Unmanned Aircraft (SUA) for civilian customers.SUA is a CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) classification covering aircraft weighing less than7Kg and requiring minimal regulations over their operations in UK airspace.This requires research to quantify what the market wants or is likely to want in future; toassessand evaluate emerging and latent technologies that can meet these requirements; and tounderstand the likely regulatory and legal framework that these craft will have to operate in.All three are needed in order to for businesses to offer professional and commercial gradeservices.There are good indicators that the the market for SUA for civilian applications is growingglobally. In the UK, current use of SUAs is mainly as platforms for video and photographyfor the leisure market with some use in industrial survey and public service roles such as thepolice. The long term commercial viability of these is still uncertain. Industry and the usercommunity propose more novel applications and services such as: ability to carry differentpayloads such as IR, radar, air quality sniffers, noise monitoring, more autonomousoperations with on board intelligence to allow and ‘sense-and-avoid’, enable handover,evasive manoeuvre under specific conditions, wider use in disaster management, monitoringland use and other applications.However none of these are likely to see commercial operations while developments of suchcraft are largely uncoordinated and left to the vendors to drive forward as no one is sure whatthe market for this segment is likely to be.We believe there is a huge potential market both in the UK and globally for SUA servicessuited for the civilian professional market. But this requires sustained and coordinatedmarketing and R & Deffort, which is the purpose of this project