Future Flight Use Cases: Nine Ways Future Flight Will Transform Aviation

The Future Flight Challenge has released a valuable resource outlining key use cases for future flight technologies. These nine applications span across every sector, most crucially critical national infrastructure (CNI).  

Throughout the report, drone inspection stands out as a vital tool for maintaining and securing critical national infrastructure. The quality aerial data capture BVLOS drones provide will revolutionise monitoring of assets such as power lines, pylons, bridges, rail tracks and other essential infrastructure components – components we rely on to keep our society running. As the report states:

 “The uncrewed aircraft system will be flown beyond visual light of sight and be the primary means of inspection, monitoring, surveying and other support capability. Better data, captured more efficiently, with no potential risk to individuals and using green technology will transform aerial inspection, monitoring and survey.”

About The Future Flight Challenge

UKRI’s Future Flight Challenge, delivered by Innovate UK and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), is helping to build the ecosystem needed to accelerate the introduction of advanced air mobility, drones, and zero-emission regional aircraft in the UK. 

With this mission in mind, the Future Flight Challenge has supported our work to advance the adoption of future flight technologies across CNI. We received Phase 3 funding in 2022 for our automated corrosion inspection project with NGET and KeenAI. With the Future Flight Challenge’s support, we are building the system that will unlock safe, scaled BVLOS drone inspection for critical national infrastructure

Future flight technology will change the way we run our world; making our CNI more sustainable, secure, safe and effective by transforming data capture. This use case report highlights the benefits of future flight, but also perfectly describes the challenges holding businesses and operators back from these benefits – and how solutions like ours can overcome them.

Read the report here: Future Flight Use Cases: Nine Ways Future Flight Will Transform Aviation