Japan tests digital ‘air traffic control’ at Expo 2025 to make drones and flying taxis viable in cities
September 24, 2025
Japan will use Expo 2025 Osaka as a live proving ground for Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM), marking one of the country’s most advanced steps yet toward integrating drones and advanced air mobility (AAM) vehicles safely into urban airspace.
Intent Exchange, NEC and NTT DATA will jointly operate a pilot UTM deployment from 16 August to 13 October 2025, providing unified monitoring of drones and air taxis around the Expo site. The trial is part of the government-backed Realization of Advanced Air Mobility Project (ReAMo), promoted by NEDO.
Building the digital ‘air traffic control’ to enable AAM
While electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) designs attract attention, industry leaders warn that without robust digital traffic management, the skies above cities will remain closed to routine drone and AAM operations.
The Expo pilot will test key UTM functions, including:
- Geofencing and geocaging: virtual boundaries and designated operating zones to keep drones out of restricted areas and ensure they follow flight plans.
- Remote ID tracking: receivers installed around the site to broadcast drone identity and position, enabling real-time situational awareness.
- ADS-B integration: low-altitude receivers developed by JAXA will collect position data from manned aircraft and AAM, relayed through NTT DATA’s Supplemental Data Service Provider.
- Deviation alerts: automated detection of incursions or flight plan deviations, with notifications to the vertiport operator, drone teams and AAM operators.
These functions will be trialled by a consortium of stakeholders, including ORIX Corporation (vertiport operator), SkyDrive (AAM developer), JUIDA and Blue Innovation (drone traffic management team).
Expo AAM trial to feed directly into regulatory framework
The pilot is designed not just as a technology demo but as input into Japan’s emerging regulatory framework. Findings will be submitted to the Civil Aviation Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), which is developing certification rules for UTM Service Providers.
Japan’s roadmap defines UTM based on the government’s DIPS2.0 platform as “Step 1.” The Expo trial corresponds to “Step 2,” where certified private USPs are expected to provide functions such as manned aircraft surveillance and compliance monitoring between filed flight plans and real operations.
By staging the trial at Expo 2025, Japan will showcase its capabilities to a global audience. The event is expected to draw tens of millions of visitors, giving regulators and industry partners a unique opportunity to stress-test systems in a dense, high-profile environment.
Internationally, NASA and the FAA in the US and EASA in Europe are running parallel UTM efforts. Japan’s pilot underscores its determination to be part of the global standard-setting process, ensuring interoperability for future AAM operations.
Towards an AAM ecosystem
With NEC and NTT DATA providing digital infrastructure, JAXA supplying surveillance technology, and ORIX developing vertiport operations, the Expo trial illustrates how Japan is building a complete ecosystem to support advanced air mobility.
SkyDrive has already been conducting demonstration flights of its SD-05 eVTOL from the Expo Vertiport over Osaka Bay, and will soon expand to more urban test flights from the Osakako Vertiport. Integrating those operations into a live UTM environment represents the next step — evolving from high-profile demo flights to managed, monitored airspace that can scale into regular transport services.
Knowledge gained will also feed into JAXA’s work on an integrated traffic management architecture designed to let crewed and uncrewed aircraft safely share the same skies.
For the aviation industry, the Expo pilot offers a rare glimpse of how regulation, infrastructure and technology are converging — and how flying taxis are beginning to shift from concept to tangible public benefit in Japan’s urban transport mix.
