The recently completed SafePilot Weather Watch Project was a £160,000 project with the purpose of combining live weather, airspace, terrain and other data to support in-flight route planning for both private and commercial operations – manned and unmanned.
Airlanders’ delivery of brand new aviation capability meant it was chosen as customer due to its unique ability to fly at a wide range of altitudes easily and at a range of speeds, particularly some low loiter speeds, where weather data could be important.
This grant supported a consortium led by Blue Bear Systems with their partner the Met Office and Airlander as their end user. This grant allows the Met Office to contribute to this project via the exploitation of their meteorological Big Data that is delivered every day from their new state-of-the-art supercomputer.
A NATEP Grant provided £80,000 funding; the grant was funded by the Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI) provided by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS Dept.) and administered by Birmingham Finance on behalf of Birmingham City Council. NATEP supports the Aerospace Growth Partnership (AGP) Strategy ‘Lifting Off’. NATEP is Project Managed by ADS and this project was delivered through Farnborough Aerospace Consortium (FAC).
Project achievements include:
- Creation of a common for all Blue Bear products, which define weather, terrain elevation, airspace restrictions, airport locations, road & rail infrastructure, and more.
- Exploitation of UK-Gov Big Data from the Met Office, creating new markets for UK talent and expertise.
- Exploitation of previous UK ‘autonomy’ research to support to improve both safety and efficiency of operations.
- Integration of of complex geospatial information into Blue Bear’s (vGCS).
Blue Bear Systems will continue to progress SafePilot Weather Watch as part of their participation with the Airstart Programme whilst Airlander is continuing with its landmark Flight Test Programme throughout the rest of this year.
Source: Press Release