Bringing distributed traffic management closer to reality! — Distributed Sky updates
Last year we have progressed significantly in bringing decentralized technologies to traffic management under Distributed Sky project. When we started working on this concept in 2016 nobody in the aviation industry has heard of the word “blockchain”. In 2017 the industry has experienced tremendous growth and people became more accepting to learn more about distributed ledger technologies (DLT).
What dczd.tech brings to traffic management?
In 2018, we focused on educating the public about the benefits we bring to the aviation industry in general and how we can solve problems with UAS traffic management (UTM) in particular.
The concept of UTM that is proposed in most countries is based on the collaboration of multiple companies which seems to be the only way to guarantee safe operations with so many flights. However, everybody still shares the same airspace and keeping track of different stakeholders’ actions is a challenge. The use of DLT brings a shared ecosystem that all players can use to exchange data securely and consistently. Our approach allows solving trust issues making the traffic management process more transparent.
Moreover, the question of traffic management monetization interests all stakeholders since there is still no clear guidelines on how the participating companies will be able to monetize their services. We have monetization and incentivization instruments built in, making both transacting and reporting seamless.
We are excited to say that we have published the third version of Distributed Sky whitepaper. By the third revision, we were able to get traction in the aviation industry and a number of contributors have joined our effort to promote distributed ledger technologies on the UTM market!
Partnerships
In 2018 we have partnered with several companies that significantly strengthened Distributed Sky project.
At the beginning of 2018, we partnered with Simlabs — a developer of software solutions with expertise in Air Traffic Management and development of wide variety of simulation and training projects. We have written a separate blog post about our partnership.
In May, I met Lindsay Mohr, the founder of Airmarket, who had a vision of blockchain-based UTM system. We immediately found common ground and partnered with Airmarket to work together and push Distributed Sky vision forward. They proved to be outstanding experts in both technical and business aspects building enterprise-grade solutions for commercial drone market.
Together with our partners, we have worked on the 3rd revision of Distributed Sky whitepaper over summer 2018 adjusting the terminology and concepts to aviation industry realities and their contribution is hard to overestimate. Airmarket’s novel approach to geofencing formed the basis of Distributed Sky geofencing component and it got significant traction worldwide. Simlabs, having vast experience with existing air traffic management systems have made an invaluable contribution to UTM/ATM integration part.
ICAO presentation
Our partners from Airmarket were invited to share the blockchain-based vision for UTM at the annual ICAO Drone Enable/2 event which was held in September 2018 in Chengdu, China. Having worked together over the summer we were able to deliver a strong presentation telling the aviation industry how distributed edger technologies can solve their existing problems.
Lindsay Mohr from Airmarket gave an excellent presentation sharing our vision and approach connecting the content to the terminology of the aviation industry. Andrey Morozov has participated in the event as our technical expert conducting deep conversations with aviation industry experts.
This was a game-changing event where aviation industry finally recognized the benefits of using distributed ledger technologies, such as shared ecosystem, universal trust mechanism, and monetization instruments.
What now?
We have demonstrated how a drone service provider can utilize Distributed Sky technologies for flight plan approval. Our goal is to work together with our partners to demonstrate the capabilities of Distributed Sky technologies in real-world demonstrations.
Distributed Sky project is an integral part of our mission and we hope that together with our partners we will deliver a safe, transparent and scalable traffic management solution for mobile robotics!
