Vertiports
To unlock the Future of Flight potential and realise the significant GDP uplifts in many industries (PriceWaterhouseCoopers forecast), scalable infrastructure to enable the landing and take-off of Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) and Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aviation, needs to be developed.
We are a project partner in a Future Flight project funded by UKRI (UK Research and Innovation), namely PORTAL, in which we are developing the vertiport infrastructure needed to ensure the provision of safe, efficient, scalable, and resilient systems, to enable the transport of goods and people from ground to air and vice versa.
PORTAL’s sensor technology and management software is modular for cost-effectively deployment and ease of configuration. Advanced situational awareness for both the ground-space and immediate airspace, provides precise monitoring and control, not just of air-vehicle movements but of all the associated ground handling operations in the immediate environment.
Cambridge Sensoriis will be developing and integrating their innovative RadarAwareTM RA1000 radar into PORTAL. The RA1000 will be key to managing the airspace surrounding the vertiport by detecting non-cooperative targets within a range of 3km, detecting mid-sized Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) at 1,000 metres from the radar.
ARC-LandingTM radar system could also be used in such vertiport operations to facilitate the automation of UAVs landing onto a pad. An ARCTM Primary Radar will actively cooperate with ARCTM secondary radars on the ground, enabling relative positioning during the critical approach and landing phases of flight. The ARC Primary reports the range, bearing, elevation and ID to other ARC Secondary radars on or around the landing zone, whilst ignoring radar reflections from background infrastructure.
Our Active Radar Cooperating (or ARCTM) technology provides a localisation capability based upon direct radar range measurement, that is independent of satellites and invulnerable to jamming mechanisms, making it a very resilient landing system that you can depend on.
Our systems detect UAVs approaching the vertiport and reports their locations. They support safe coordination of the approach of UAVs that we expect, and unanticipated flying objects such as non-cooperating traffic, including light aircraft, and general aviation. This is airspace management that can be trusted.