A drone flying in front of a wind turbine
A drone flying in front of a wind turbine

UWL academic secures Knowledge Exchange funding for 'Future Flight' Masters course

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Dr Anil Padhra, from UWL’s London Geller College of Hospitality and Tourism, has secured funding from Innovate UK’s ‘Future Flight Challenge’, which is investing in projects that can help build on the UK aviation industry’s skills.

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UWL is leading the six month long project to deliver course content and materials to support skills, talent and training, which has been awarded a £50,000 grant, with Dr Padhra as project manager and principal investigator.

Speaking about the project, Anil says:

Future Flight aims to enable the development and operation of drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in UK towns and cities. The NHS already does medication transportation using drones across the Isle of Wight and companies like DHL, Amazon, FedEx are planning to deliver parcels too.”

A Future Flight drone flying over a forest

About 70,000 drones are expected to be flying in the UK by 2030-2035. In the future, this will not just see goods being transported however, but people too.

Anil adds:

For the UK to be a world leader in what we are calling ‘advanced air mobility’, we need the skills that we don't currently have. We are partnering with commercial drone experts Coptrz who are experts in training drone pilots and Safeguard Engineering who are skilled in designing ‘vertiports’ – the drone airports that will be required.

Vertiports are set to be built around the country so that people will be able to travel the UK using UAVs.”

Each of the project partners will be designing a module based on their expertise.

Together we are developing a Masters course to help narrow the skills gap. There are a few Masters courses already out there on drones, but they are pretty much engineering focused. So, this course will be unique because it will look at the broader system, at areas like policy and regulation and how to modify the airspace.”

The course will also consider vehicle design and the specifications and limitations of the current and future vehicles.

It takes a whole systems approach which is something that doesn't exist at the moment in the UK. It will also look at vertiports and the airports and address the cyber security concerns around it,”

Dr Padhra adds.

UWL is proud to be part of the UK’s effort to become a world-leader in unmanned aerial vehicles and the associated infrastructure, he concludes:

The expertise of the University’s Knowledge Exchange team was invaluable in strengthening our proposal and helping to secure the funding.”

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