UNIFLY APS

Their core work

UNIFLY APS is a Danish drone and UAS industry company based in Odense, specialising in U-space — the digital airspace management infrastructure that allows drones to operate safely in low-level airspace. Their real-world work centres on the design and implementation of traffic management systems for unmanned aircraft, including the rules, architectures, and software that let drones and urban air mobility vehicles (eVTOL, eCTOL) coexist with general aviation. In EU research consortia they contribute operational and industry expertise to projects that are defining the regulatory and technical foundation of European drone airspace. As an SME they bring practitioner knowledge of what U-space systems must look like to actually work in commercial deployment.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

UNIFLY's H2020 participation spans only two years (2020–2021) but the keyword shift is clear: Metropolis 2 anchored them in the foundational engineering problem — how do you design airspace and manage separation between drones at scale? CORUS-XUAM then pulled the scope outward dramatically, adding eVTOL and eCTOL (electric urban air taxis), social acceptance, live demonstration, and full operational architecture across an entire urban airspace system. The trajectory is from technical airspace geometry toward full urban aviation ecosystem thinking, including the human and societal dimensions of drone integration.

UNIFLY is moving toward the full urban air mobility stack — beyond drones into air taxis and mixed-airspace operations — positioning itself for the commercial UAM market that is expected to scale in Europe from 2025 onward.

How they like to work

UNIFLY has participated exclusively as a third party in both projects, never as a formal coordinator or named participant. This pattern typically means they are brought in for specific operational, software, or commercial expertise that the main consortium needs but cannot supply internally — subcontracted rather than funded directly by the EC. Both projects placed them inside very large consortia (Metropolis 2 and CORUS-XUAM each involved major European aviation research institutions), indicating they are comfortable contributing to industrial-scale collaborative environments without holding a leading administrative role.

Despite only two projects, UNIFLY has touched 37 unique consortium partners across 11 countries — a sign that both projects were flagship EU aviation research efforts with broad, multi-national memberships. Their network connects them to the core European drone and ATM research community, likely including EUROCONTROL ecosystem partners, aviation authorities, and leading aerospace research institutes.

What sets them apart

UNIFLY sits at the intersection of drone industry practice and EU airspace policy research — a rare position for an SME. While most small companies in this space focus on drone hardware or specific applications, UNIFLY contributes at the system architecture and concept-of-operations level, which gives them unusual insight into how the European regulatory framework for drones is actually being built. For a consortium looking to bridge academic U-space research and commercial deployment reality, an Odense-based SME with direct involvement in two of the EU's defining U-space projects offers credibility that larger aerospace primes may lack.

Highlights from their portfolio

• CORUS-XUAM
  This was the EU's definitive CONOPS extension for urban air mobility — one of the highest-profile U-space policy documents produced under H2020 — making UNIFLY's involvement a marker of industry standing in the European drone regulation community.
• Metropolis 2
  Metropolis 2 tackled the hardest open problem in drone airspace: how to design separation rules that scale to thousands of simultaneous flights, making it foundational to all future U-space implementations.