RWTH builds drone test center in Aldenhoven
Scientists worked in the drone test center in Aldenhoven. On Tuesday, the first groundbreaking ceremony took place for the construction of permanent buildings.
(Image: Dmitry Kalinovsky / Shutterstock.com)
The Rhenish-Westphalian Technical University (RWTH) in Aachen is opening a test site for drones. At the Center for Vertical Mobility (CVM), unmanned aerial vehicles and technologies, particularly in the area of security, are to be tested in the future.
Both drones themselves and systems to protect them against interference from jamming and spoofing will be tested. Scenarios will also be simulated, such as how drones can support rescue forces in flood disasters or in the search for missing persons.
One research focus is security: “The aircraft must function even if – unintentional or intentional – interference occurs,” said Dieter Moormann, head of the Institute of Flight Systems Dynamics at RWTH. “It’s not just about building the aircraft, but also about their application in real environments where interference can occur.”
Testing since 2022
Currently, the facility in Aldenhoven, about 25 kilometers northeast of Aachen, consists of a pop-up infrastructure with containers, where scientific operations have been running since May 2022. On Tuesday, the groundbreaking ceremony took place for the construction of a permanent infrastructure. The project is funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The heart of the CVM will be the Flight Operation Center, from which all flight operations will be controlled and monitored. A take-off and landing area, a so-called vertiport, and several hangars will also be built on the site. These include a hangar and a testing hall where, for example, the electromagnetic compatibility of the systems can be tested.
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The CVM is being built in close proximity to the Aldenhoven Testing Center, a car testing track where autonomous driving is also being tested. The spatial proximity is intentional; the CVM is intended to test “cross-modal networked automated mobility.” This means that “the findings gained at the CVM will be relevant not only for automated aviation but also for automated driving, whether on roads or rails,” the RWTH announced.
(wpl)
