A Testbed for Advanced Aerial Mobility

The Future Mobility Campus Ireland (FMCI) is the first complete development centre and full-scale test bed in Ireland and operating across Europe. The facility focuses on comprehensive mobility technologies that span both ground and air (unmanned drones, eVTOL, AAM, UTM) uses. FMCI supports a range of parties; from individual researchers to multi-national corporations, as well as start-ups and government entities. FMCI assists organisations to conceive, develop, trial, and deploy societally-transformative transport solutions.

FMCI Air targets a high growth potential market that is Advanced Aerial Mobility (AAM). From an industry perspective there are good synergies between air mobility and road mobility. Many of the same industry and research partners who are developing products for the future of road transportation will also utilise these products for air mobility.

FMCI Drone Port is designed to be scalable and mobile. To support testing and operations, the Drone Port offers a flight operations centre and a mobile unit to allow flexibility for off-site testing. The flight operations centre is based on a modular container equipped with the necessary radio and communications equipment to ensure flight safety.

FMCI provides its customers access to its advanced control room capabilities enabling insightful and data-driven monitoring and visual analytics of mobility data. The control room is kitted with Audio Visual system for real-time monitoring of the testbed. FMCI also has a suits of test drone across a range of sizes as well as a mobile control center which can be driven to offsite locations providing data connectivity as well as office space at offsite locations. 

FMCI is also the coordinator of an EU funded project entitled "ÉALÚ-AER," which is one of the first European Digital Sky Demonstrators to focus on U-space and Urban Air Mobility as part of the European ATM Master Plan designed by the SESAR Joint Undertaking (JU). SESAR JU aims at accelerating through research and innovation the delivery of an inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Digital European Sky. Digital Sky Demonstrators, such as ÉALÚ-AER, are high-level Technology Readiness Level (TRL 7-8) projects that are funded in collaboration with the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) under the Connected Europe Facility (CEF) funding instrument.