Osl Completes Final Phase Of Project Hado, Setting New Standards For Autonomous Drone Operations In The Uk

OSL has announced the successful completion of the final phase of Project HADO, a UKRI-funded research and development initiative aimed at enabling secure, repeatable Beyond Visual Line of Sight BVLOS drone operations across UK airspace. The milestone marks the conclusion of more than two years of intensive innovation, consortium collaboration, and field testing.

OSL led the consortium as prime integrator, bringing together key organisations including Heathrow , Thales, Cranfield University, UAVTEK, Carmenta, HEROTECH8, and Dynamic Intelligence Solutions-each contributing critical expertise across aviation, autonomy, surveillance, and airspace management.

Project HADO - short for High-Intensity Autonomous Drone Operations - focuses on enabling fully autonomous drone missions in busy, safety-critical environments such as airports, ports, urban centres, and transport hubs. These are spaces where complex air and ground activity makes uncrewed flight especially challenging. While many BVLOS projects explore long-range corridor travel, HADO was designed to address the far more difficult task of operating autonomously within high-density, operationally complex areas.

In the final series of live trials, OSL deployed its system within the Heathrow Flight Restriction Zone FRZ, demonstrating two core use cases: perimeter patrol, using visible and thermal cameras to detect loiterers or intrusions along a fence line and building survey, using automated point-to-point flight and image capture to generate both visual and thermal inspection data.

These missions were supported by a detailed digital twin of the environment, developed in collaboration with Cranfield University. This synthetic modelling environment enabled precise flight planning, environmental awareness, and robust training of the autonomous behaviours required for safe and repeatable operations.