Drone collision avoidance at Airlabs Austria: “Existing systems are not sufficient”

Airlabs Austria is the national innovation lab for unmanned aircraft systems. At “DroneVation & Defence 2025” (DVD 2025), technical product manager Robin Deutsch talked about current projects – from drone collision avoidance onwards – and fields of application.

Mr Deutsch, which research projects is Airlabs Austria currently pursuing?
A central field of research at the moment is “sense and avoid” – that is, the ability of aircraft to detect other flying objects and avoid them. Such collision avoidance systems have existed in manned aviation for decades. Naturally, this is also a big issue for drones.

Our research project evaluates whether existing collision avoidance systems are sufficient for drones. The results so far show: existing systems are not sufficient; they are not robust enough, not reliable enough and have limited range. The study focused primarily on the civilian sector. However, the results are also relevant for military applications – for example during exercises in civilian airspace.

Another current research project is IFIRE. The abbreviation stands for Icing Forecast in Real Environment. A tool is being developed that forecasts the risk of icing above a certain flight altitude. This makes it possible to identify critical weather conditions at an early stage and avoid dangerous situations in which an iced-up drone could crash within seconds.

Is IFIRE a purely software-based solution, or are additional modules and sensors required on board the drone?
Both. On the one hand, we are developing software that will be called Austrian Icing Map. With this software you can determine whether there is a risk of icing when flying from A to B and at what altitude icing could occur.

However, the project also requires sensors with which we equip a drone. To validate the tool, we deliberately fly this drone into that area and see whether icing occurs or not. If these sensors report that icing is actually occurring, this confirms the software.

Your projects also include fawn rescue and the surveying of alpine areas. In which fields of application do you see the greatest potential in the medium term – commercially or for society?
Fawn rescue is of course a fine thing. But I definitely see potential in surveying and inspection, for example of motorways, power lines or wind turbines. Currently helicopters perform these tasks – at high cost. Drones could offer a significantly more efficient alternative here. There is also potential in parcel delivery, but unfortunately this is currently difficult to implement from a regulatory point of view.

Do you know of countries where parcel delivery by drone has already been implemented?
In the USA, Amazon has locations where this already works and parcels are delivered directly to the front door. There are also projects in Germany where, for example, medicines are transported from the mainland to islands. However, these are model regions – in each case operations are still in the test phase.