ACUTE Project – Facts and Findings on UAS Traffic in European Cities

The increasing use of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) is posing challenges to aviation authorities, especially in their integration with manned aviation. Through the ACUTE (Affordable Cooperative UAS Traffic Detection) project, an initiative of EUROCONTROL, UAS detection antennas are deployed in European cities to collect actual data on current UAS flights. This paper presents statistical analysis on detected UAS traffic and its proximity to manned aviation, as well as analysis using machine learning algorithms to detect patterns in UAS operations. The findings highlight a significant number of UAS users in various environments, as well as traffic fairly close to manned aviation. All these results will help Member States to refine airspace management and improve the safety of UAS operations.