Singapore: Heron AirBridge Signs MOU with King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang

Heron Air­Bridge, a South­east Asian unmanned air­craft sys­tem traf­fic man­age­ment (UTM), announced this week a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) with King Mongkut’s Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy Lad­kra­bang (KMITL), a research and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion based in Bangkok, Thai­land, reports a press release. The col­lab­o­ra­tion “aims to spear­head the R&D of UTM con­cepts and tech­nolo­gies in Thai­land.” This comes soon after an alliance in March with Immarsat.

Com­pared to North Amer­i­ca and Europe, the adop­tion of unmanned air­craft in South­east Asia has been slow. Thai­land, for exam­ple, despite oper­at­ing some of the busiest inter­na­tion­al air­ports in the region and fac­ing seri­ous traf­fic con­ges­tion issues, has yet to ful­ly embrace the indus­try. There­fore, believes the part­ner­ship, “There exists mas­sive poten­tial for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty in the area.”

(l to r) Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor Dr. Soem­sak Yooyen (Dean, IAAI, KMITL), Ryan Lee (CEO and co-Founder, Heron Air­Bridge)

To accel­er­ate the deploy­ment of unmanned air­craft sys­tems (UAS) in Thai­land, Heron Air­Bridge is to col­lab­o­rate with KMITL’s Inter­na­tion­al Acad­e­my of Avi­a­tion Indus­try to build up the local Thai exper­tise and capa­bil­i­ties required for the devel­op­ment of UTM con­cepts, tech­nolo­gies and ser­vices.

Ryan Lee, CEO and co-Founder of Heron Air­Bridge, com­ment­ed, “We hope that this part­ner­ship will kick­start long-term rela­tion­ships in Thai­land to sup­port them on the Thai­land 4.0 jour­ney, where UAS can con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to increas­ing eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, improv­ing social well-being, rais­ing human val­ues and pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment.”

Under the MOU agree­ment, “The part­ner­ship,” explains the release, “will intro­duce and pro­mote UTM ser­vices, oper­a­tional con­cepts and work­flows tai­lored to Thailand’s unique needs. It will high­light the ben­e­fits that AAM can bring to the dif­fer­ent indus­tries such as logis­tics, emer­gency ser­vices, agri­cul­ture, forestry and ener­gy, to name a few.” Adding, “The long-term goal is to estab­lish a base­line UTM sys­tem that can be fur­ther cus­tomised accord­ing to the country’s future require­ments.”

Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor Dr. Soem­sak Yooyen, the Dean of the Inter­na­tion­al Acad­e­my of Avi­a­tion Indus­try, remarked, The part­ner­ship will enable us to com­bine our strengths and exper­tise to cre­ate cut­ting-edge solu­tions in the field of unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles. We believe that this col­lab­o­ra­tion will open doors of oppor­tu­ni­ty for research, devel­op­ment and inno­va­tion in the avi­a­tion indus­try.

He con­tin­ued, “We aim to estab­lish a strong foun­da­tion for UTM con­cepts, oper­a­tional work­flows and tech­nolo­gies to pave the way for the future of avi­a­tion in Thai­land.”

Heron Air­Bridge Recent Part­ner­ship with Immarsat

Back­ground

Heron Air­Bridge, is a sub­sidiary of the Heron Tech­nol­o­gy Group, a cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and drone tech­nol­o­gy ser­vices provider from Sin­ga­pore. It was found­ed last year. Focussing pri­mar­i­ly on Asia, the com­pa­ny is steadi­ly strength­en­ing its pres­ence as part of a mis­sion to fos­ter the adop­tion of UAS deploy­ment in the region and beyond.

Coun­tries such as Indone­sia, Viet­nam and the Philip­pines can equal­ly ben­e­fit from the broad­er use of UAS as Thai­land. Locat­ed in the cen­tre of the region, Heron Air­Bridge pro­vides strong, localised sup­port, in its jour­ney to kick­start UTM capa­bil­i­ties and solu­tions.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://heron-technology.com/aviation/

https://www.kmitl.ac.th/

(Images: Heron Air­Bridge)