On Wednesday 17th of January 2018, Filippo Tomasello (EuroUSC Italia) presented the project REAL to the RPAS CivOps 2018 Conference held in Paris, France. This is an international conference focusing on policy & regulatory matters for civil RPAS operators. It aimed to address operational matters, current & future applications, standard operational scenarios, Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA), operational experience, operator qualification, pilot training & qualification, test range safety rules, data protection & privacy, insurance, and the upcoming European Union RPAS regulation.

The event was attended by more than 150 participants, including attendees from 20 states including Israel, South Africa, Singapore and USA in addition to several European countries. Press representatives were present, as well as EUROCONTROL, the Joint Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Systems (JARUS), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the European Commission and several EU Agencies (EASA, EDA, EMSA, SESAR JU).

In his presentation, Filippo stressed the benefits that EGNOS may bring to navigation of civil drones (higher accuracy and far better integrity in comparison with the mere GPS) as well as the potential and current limits of SORA. After the presentation, he participated to a panel for debating with the floor. He received also several questions during the following conference pause.

The presentation was appreciated by EASA and raised interest in particular from Authorities considering the use of SORA, from manufacturing industry interested in integrating EGNOS into respective drones and in general for the liability and legal aspects of satellite service providers, including when providing command and control link to govern the drone.