ANRA Technologies in Japan: Airspace Management and Drone Delivery Platforms Demonstration

Japan sees ANRA take flight, demonstrating the latest drone delivery platforms and efficient airspace management.
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Last updatedLast updated: January 06, 2024
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The National Institute of New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation (NEDO) are leading a project which will allow live drone flights to take place. It is done in collaboration with ANRA Technologies, a global company with offices in Washington DC, London, and New Delhi, which are known for leading airspace management technologies.

As part of the project, ANRA plans to demonstrate the technologies and platforms they have developed, enabling complete drone traffic management, which allows for secure and safe multiple drone operations within the same airspace.

Major Players in Drone Operations

ANRA Technologies are exhibiting drone operations alongside major players in the technology space, including NEC Corporations, Nippon Airways, and BIRD INITIATIVE.

  • NEC Corporation is a Japanese IT and electronics corporation offering a wide range of technologies, including cloud computing, AI, telecommunications, and associated software. NEC was founded 122 years ago in Tokyo, Japan.
  • Nippon Airways, also known as ANA, was founded in 1952, and it has major commercial aviation ownership and shareholding across the world.
  • BIRD INITIATIVE Trusted Source BIRD INITIATIVE established to accelerate the creation of new businesses through R&D: Press Releases | NEC Under such circumstances, BIRD, representing a combination of Business Innovation powered by R&D, aims to promote a new research and development framework called “Co-creative R&D” in which issues and technologies are brought together from industry, government and academia. www.nec.com is a combination of 6 companies from different industries that have come together to research and develop various areas of technology, including AI.

The project takes place in Wakkanai City in Japan Trusted Source Wakkanai | Hokkaido Attractions | Travel Japan | JNTO Wakkanai is a city located at the very north of Hokkaido. The city sprawls along the coast and provides access to the beautiful Rishiri-Rebun-Sarobetsu National Park. www.japan.travel using ANRA SmartSkies management systems. Wakkanai is known for sitting between Japan and Russia, giving it a unique culture mash-up that forms an exciting base for leading technologies to work in.

NEDO leads the way in researching and developing this space in order to create a usable, safe, and secure framework for a nationwide traffic management system for drones.

Futuristic Project Goals

The project itself, run by NEDO, is designed to create a wide range of safety and logistical systems and functionality that allows unmanned aircraft to enter the National Airspace without any risk. Or at least with the risk that is highly managed, as with manned aircraft.

The project will allow for multiple demonstrations that allow various software and systems to display what they can do, including disaster response demonstrations.

The Importance of Safe Drone Airspace

Projects like this one led by NEDO are essential for the future of commercial drone operations, an industry set to be worth nearly 60 billion dollars by 2026 Trusted Source Worldwide - commercial drone market size | Statista Estimated size of the global commercial drone market in 2021 with a forecast for 2026. www.statista.com . Drones have to be able to fly safely between operators without colliding or causing other safety issues.

This project utilizes something called automatic negotiation AI technology, something that is in development with RIKEN and Industrial Technology Research Institute. This is, at its most basic form, where drones will be able to avoid collisions with each other because of technology within their own systems, rather than relying on the drone operators or the drone network and safety sensors.

This is being researched in addition to something called digital twin technology, which is also being researched in collaborations it’s the National Institute of Informatics. Digital twin technology is where a digital representation of a physical object, service, or even person or animal is created. This enables sophisticated data to be collected on how that object might behave in certain scenarios. It also allows testing to be done to see how objects might behave with software types, refining those processes to save money, time, and resources on real-life testing. These kinds of simulations are beneficial when it comes to drone development.

References

1.
BIRD INITIATIVE established to accelerate the creation of new businesses through R&D: Press Releases | NEC
Under such circumstances, BIRD, representing a combination of Business Innovation powered by R&D, aims to promote a new research and development framework called “Co-creative R&D” in which issues and technologies are brought together from industry, government and academia.
2.
Wakkanai | Hokkaido Attractions | Travel Japan | JNTO
Wakkanai is a city located at the very north of Hokkaido. The city sprawls along the coast and provides access to the beautiful Rishiri-Rebun-Sarobetsu National Park.
3.
Worldwide - commercial drone market size | Statista
Estimated size of the global commercial drone market in 2021 with a forecast for 2026.
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