  U-space as defined by the European Commission is a set of new services
relying on a high level of digitalization and automation of functions and
specific procedures, designed to provide safe, efficient and secure access to
airspace for large numbers of unmanned aircraft, operating automatically and
even beyond visual line of sight. This kind of concepts of operations (ConOps)
of airspace integration for drones and air taxis are also called UTM (Unmanned
aircraft system Traffic Management) systems, being U-space the UTM ConOps
agreed for Europe. U-space services are under development but commercially not
available yet. For demonstration purposes, in the project HorizonUAM, a central
U-space cloud service is simulated through a local messaging server using the
protocol MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport). A prototypical vertidrome
management tool was created to demonstrate the scheduling and sequencing of air
taxi flights. The vertidrome manager is fully integrated within U-space and
receives real-time information on flight plans, including requests for start
and landing and emergency notifications. Additional information coming from
other U-space services (e.g. weather information) can be accessed on request.
The integration was demonstrated in a scaled flight test environment with
multicopters (<15 kg) representing passenger carrying air taxis.
