Thales has been selected to manage the European Geosafe project to establish geofencing solutions for safe, efficient and secure access to airspace of a large number of drones. Thales will be supported by Aeromapper, AirMap, Atechsys and SPH Engineering.

Geosafe is part of the efforts by SESAR Joint Undertaking (SESAR JU) in support of the European Commission's U-space initiative — a system designed to connect all drones flying in the air and make all drones visible for authorities and citizens.

By securing the flight pattern of drones to avoid determined zones, geofencing solutions constitute key safety enablers. They are mandatory to ensure that drones do not fly in protected perimeters around critical infrastructures, such as power plants or airports.

The objectives of Geosafe are to establish state-of-the-art geofencing solutions regarding U-space regulation and to propose improvements and recommendations for future geofencing system definition.

Geosafe will be based on a one-year flight test campaign, assessing a number of commercially available geofencing solutions in order to propose improved geofencing systems for tomorrow and technological improvements for automated drones.

The 280 flight tests will be conducted in France, Germany and Latvia during the course of the year. These tests are intended to evaluate all possible situations that an automated drone will face in urban and rural areas.