UAVNET Meeting #2

A highly successful second meeting of the UAVNET thematic network was held on the 11th / 12th February 2002 in Capua Italy, hosted by CIRA. Interest in the activities of UAVNET has greatly exceeded expectations and over eighty participants from forty organisations representing twelve countries, attended the meeting which has now taken on the semblance of a workshop.

Additional photographs taken at the meeting are also available in the Document Library and may be downloaded.

Schedule for Future Meetings

UAVNET workshops are to take place approximately every three months for the exchange of information on a broad spectrum of topics covering all aspects of UAVs for civil applications.

1. The next UAVNET meeting #3 will be held in Warsaw Poland April 29-30, 2002 hosted by Warsaw University of Technology.

2. The subsequent UAVNET meeting #4 will be held in Rochester England July 23-24, 2002 hosted by BAe Systems. This meeting will coincide with the Farnborough Airshow.

Observers are invited to attend all network meetings and invitations will be sent to all interested observers to attend the Workshop portion of all meetings.

Promotion and Dissemination

1. It is proposed to dedicate one future UAVNET meeting to potential applications of civil UAVs. Presentations will be of a general nature and will deal primarily with the application benefits from the utilization of UAVs within civilian contexts. Guests will be invited from those (non-aerospace) industries which could eventually benefit from potential civilian applications for UAVs (e.g. communications etc.)
2. UAVNET members will be available to make presentations on civil UAV concepts, at non-aerospace conferences in order to stimulate interest in this subject.

The European Commission has encouraged UAVNET to take under its umbrella additional UAV projects such as the Craft Project for SME organizations being led by Fokker Space BV (NL) and Qinetiq Ltd. (UK).  This project is for an airship, and the scope of work includes the airship flight control system, power and propulsion system, onboard communications, air/ground communications, ground control system and mission management system.

Another project, UAVLAB, whose proposal was not accepted in the most recent Environment Call, has decided to continue its activity for re-submission within the Sixth Framework.  In order to prepare its participants and the commission for the concept within this project, they have requested that UAVNET provide an umbrella of sponsorship for the “1st Applied Scientific Conference for UAV Applications in Europe”, to take place on June 10th and 11th at Kiruna in Sweden. This seminar will include a demonstration by SSC of the Eagle UAV in flight.