The REALITY project aims to promote the use of EGNOS for drone operations in the context of the European vision for the U-Space development. For this purpose, REALITY will map the specific requirements of non-recreational drone applications in navigation performance and safety requirements, e.g. in accuracy, availability, continuity and integrity, and will analyze to what extent solutions based on EGNOS could satisfy them.

The REALITY project will develop an EGNOS and EGNSS drone navigation activator which will consist of:

• an acquisition of drone navigation data and a real-time performance monitoring system, hardware / software, to support navigation analysis based on EGNOS;
• a post-processing navigation performance analysis system to evaluate the error of the EGNOS-based solution supported by the reference system, also calculating integrity and other risk-related figures such as the impact of undetectable errors, instrument errors and EGNSS errors;
• an automated, cloud-based post-mission performance monitoring tool to facilitate massive data management and in-flight performance assessment;
• ready-to-use flight procedures based on the EGNOS instrument and corresponding RNP for four applications and operations with relevant and representative drones;
• standard and reference data and demonstrations collected in more than one hundred flights. This data will be post-processed to provide evidence to industrial stakeholders and to those of the regulatory authorities of the added value of EGNOS and GNSS to drone navigation.

To collect a broad spectrum of representative application requirements, the project selected 4 scenarios: (SC1) aerial mapping (including urban areas), (SC2) firefighting operations, (SC3) freight transport and (SC4) maritime surveillance. In REALITY the application specific requirements will be analyzed and flight tests will be performed as a benchmark for EGNOS.

The two possible REALITY outputs will be:

• new RNP (Required Navigation Performance) specifications for SAPR flight missions tailored for these four representative applications of drones;
• the analysis of the contribution of EGNOS and EGNSS to drone navigation systems compatible with the specifications of the RNP.