The challenge
Future flight is the broad name for sustainably-powered drones
and air vehicles that will revolutionise the way we transport
things and travel short-distances in the future.
Within the next decade, it's increasingly likely that some kind
of future flight technology will become commonplace - parcel
delivery by drone is currently being trialled and one day we may be
hopping onto driverless helicopters for regional travel.
Many organisations, in the UK and globally, are developing the
novel vehicle technologies that will be required for future flight,
but as well as rising to the engineering challenges, it's important
to consider the wider ecosystem and what else needs to be
considered in order for future flight to succeed.
The solution
That's why we need to take a break for a CoFFEE!
CoFFEE, or 'Co-creation of Future Flight Ecosystems and
Enterprise' as it's more formally known, is a social research
project led by academics at the universities of Loughborough, Essex
and the West of England to identify and map the emerging innovation
ecosystem, complex networks of stakeholders and technology
implementation that successful future flight will need to
service.
CoFFEE is funded by ESRC, Innovate UK and the University of
Birmingham as part of a larger programme of research and recently
made a call for social researchers to participate in a series of
on-line workshops to develop a research programme around future
flight.
HSE's Jen Webster, an occupational psychologist and experienced
social science facilitator, responded to the challenge and
volunteered her skills as part of the project.
The outcome
In addition to facilitating the workshops, Jen was invited to
join the CoFFEE Advisory Board to provide oversight on qualitative
research methods and also to ensure that the health and safety of
the operators, as well as members of the public, were part of the
discussion.
Speaking about her contribution, Jen said ' HSE's mission is to
protect people and places, not just in the here and now, but also
in the future. It's vital that when we are innovating for future
flight, new technologies build in health and safety from the start
as a key part of the development process, not just for the
engineering challenges but also as part of the human and social
factors that need to be considered too.'
You can find out more about CoFFEE on the
project website.
Learn more about how HSE can help to enable new
technologies