UK: Skyports Drone Services and Makutu launch water quality BVLOS drone flights with Northumbrian Water

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Maku­tu has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed maid­en test flights for a new drone inspec­tion ser­vice set to help water com­pa­nies mon­i­tor and improve the qual­i­ty of riv­er and coastal water.

The new ser­vice, which com­bines Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices’ expert remote drone oper­a­tions and winch tech­nol­o­gy with Makutu’s water test­ing solu­tion, has launched with a pilot study UK water sup­pli­er Northum­bri­an Water.  

The test flights demon­strate how beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) elec­tric drone oper­a­tions can be used to auto­mate water qual­i­ty sur­veys to improve access to hard-to-reach areas, reduce car­bon foot­print, gath­er more data over a larg­er area, and obtain results much faster.  

Alex Brown, Direc­tor of Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices, said: “This project exem­pli­fies our com­mit­ment to improv­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty, safe­ty and access with our elec­tric drone ser­vices.  Water qual­i­ty is a huge­ly impor­tant issue in the UK. 

“The unique solu­tion we’ve devel­oped with Maku­tu pro­vides water com­pa­nies with crit­i­cal real-time data, enabling bet­ter mon­i­tor­ing, main­te­nance, and faster response to issues.”

“With Northum­bri­an Water alone cov­er­ing an area of 9,400km², the poten­tial pos­i­tive impact to the envi­ron­ment, to field per­son­nel, and to the com­mu­ni­ties that access these riv­er and coastal loca­tions is enor­mous.” 

The ser­vice aims to pro­vide an alter­na­tive to cur­rent labour-inten­sive data col­lec­tion process­es which require per­son­nel to man­u­al­ly col­lect water and return it to a cen­tral lab for test­ing. In rur­al loca­tions, over large expans­es, or dur­ing poor weath­er, this process can be dif­fi­cult, dan­ger­ous and time con­sum­ing.  

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices’ deployed its Speed­bird Aero air­craft, a recent addi­tion to the UK company’s fleet, for phase one of the flights. The air­craft has been fit­ted with spe­cial­ist winch tech­nol­o­gy which enables Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices to car­ry Makutu’s unique water sen­sor tech­nol­o­gy to test­ing loca­tions.

The winch low­ers the sen­sor into the water to col­lect test sam­ples, with data fed back to Northum­bri­an Water in near real-time for analy­sis. The high­ly auto­mat­ed air­craft does not need to return to base between tests and can col­lect data from mul­ti­ple test loca­tions in a sin­gle out­ing and on a sin­gle bat­tery charge.  

James Sum­sion, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Maku­tu, said: “The col­lab­o­ra­tion with Maku­tu, Northum­bri­an Water and Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices in this pio­neer­ing project marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion.  

“The suc­cess­ful test flights rep­re­sent not just incred­i­ble tech­ni­cal inno­va­tion but are tes­ta­ment to the pow­er of part­ner­ship and for­ward-think­ing in address­ing eco­log­i­cal chal­lenges. By har­ness­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of UAV tech­nol­o­gy, we’re stream­lin­ing data col­lec­tion and analy­sis paving the way for more informed and rapid deci­sion-mak­ing in water course man­age­ment.  

“This project is an excel­lent exam­ple of how cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy can be lever­aged for the greater good. We’re excit­ed to see how this pilot study evolves and con­tributes to set­ting new stan­dards in envi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing and sus­tain­abil­i­ty across the coun­try.” 

Phase one proof-of-con­cept flights in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Bish­op Auck­land and Blyth in the north­east of the UK have focused on test­ing Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices and Makutu’s solu­tion, sup­port­ed by visu­al ground observers.

The next phase will scale oper­a­tions and see Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices oper­ate remote­ly oper­at­ed BVLOS sam­ple col­lec­tions. 

Richard Warne­ford, Waste­water Direc­tor at Northum­bri­an Water, added: “We’re just as pas­sion­ate as our cus­tomers about pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment and improv­ing riv­er and coastal water qual­i­ty so to have these test flights under­way is real­ly excit­ing. 

“There’s a lot of hard work gone into under­stand­ing how UAV tech­nol­o­gy can be used to col­lect data effi­cient­ly, and these suc­cess­ful test flights have proven the valid­i­ty of it as part of our huge water qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing pro­gramme.  

“We’re proud to be mak­ing his­to­ry with this project and we can’t wait to begin rolling it out offi­cial­ly across the North East – it’s just anoth­er step towards hav­ing the clean­est rivers and beach­es in the coun­try.”