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Drone in front of the Elbphilharmonie in the Port of Hamburg (archive image)
Photo: Axel Heimken / dpa
Harbor tours in Hamburg should soon have one more attraction.
Because the largest German seaport will be the first nationwide test field for a drone transport system in Germany.
There it should be tried out how the unmanned aerial vehicles can be integrated into civil aviation.
The state-run Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS) and Droniq GmbH, a stake of DFS and Deutsche Telekom, want to practically explore in a test area of around ten square kilometers how drone flights are "easy, safe and in coordination with manned air traffic", they said participating companies.
The Ministry of Transport is funding the "real laboratory" with just under half a million euros.
In the end, there should be a "blueprint for the establishment of regular drone airspace in Germany," announced the Ministry of Transport.
The federal government wants to establish drones as an everyday mode of transport in just a few years.
For example, they could deliver parcels, transport medication, report traffic jams or be used for construction site inspections.
This project is to be tried out in Hamburg.
After all, drone alarms have repeatedly hampered flight operations, right up to the point of being stopped.
Drones are already in massive use today, but so far only to a very limited extent in commercial traffic.
According to an industry study, there are currently more than 430,000 drones in use in Germany.
At 45,200, the number of commercially used aircraft is significantly lower than that of private aircraft, which are mostly used as photo drones or toys.
But since 2019, the number of commercially operated drones has more than doubled, while the number of privately used drones is declining, according to the market study for the Unmanned Aviation Association.
Drones are supposed to take on dangerous tasks
According to the study, measurement is at the top of the range of applications.
Inspection and mapping tasks are also labor-intensive, time-consuming and sometimes dangerous without the use of drones.
Drones are also increasingly being used to inspect buildings and infrastructure such as wind turbines and high-voltage lines.
The federal government sees new applications in its action plan, for example in traffic monitoring on roads and waterways, in exploring landscapes and in disaster control - and in logistics: parcels could be delivered by drone, components could be transported between production plants.
Flight weeks in autumn
For commercial use, drone flights must be easy and feasible at short notice, according to the message on the test area in the port of Hamburg.
So far, however, there have been some lengthy flight authorization processes.
The concept of a »U-Space« is intended to remedy this.
In this spatially delimited airspace, according to the idea, "special rules and procedures coordinate drone traffic and enable drone flights to be carried out quickly, safely and without long approval costs - even outside the pilot's range of vision".
Specifically, the drone traffic in the »U-Space« is to be coordinated by a service provider.
In Hamburg, Droniq is now doing this with its traffic management system for drones.
It then issues flight permits for the drone missions and informs the drone pilots about the current manned and unmanned air traffic as well as any airspace restrictions, it said.
All relevant airspace and air traffic data come from DFS air traffic control.
There are to be various test flights, "in which drone flights of different complexity are tested inside and outside the range of vision up to an altitude of 150 meters".
At the end of the fall, flight weeks with practical demonstrations are planned.
mmq / dpa