Belgium: Unifly’s UTM System “Enables World’s First Autonomous Petrochemical Sample Transport at Port of Antwerp”

Uni­fly, a leader in UAS Traf­fic Man­age­ment (UTM) solu­tions, announced last week, its impor­tant role in enabling the first-ever autonomous drone trans­port of petro­chem­i­cal analy­sis sam­ples at the port of Antwerp, reports a press release. 

This ground­break­ing ini­tia­tive from ADLC (Drone Deliv­ery Ser­vices), SGS (Engi­neer­ing) and BASF (Total­En­er­gies), facil­i­tat­ed by Unifly’s advanced UTM sys­tem and using Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) tech­nolo­gies, “marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in the inte­gra­tion of autonomous drone tech­nol­o­gy into indus­tri­al oper­a­tions,” says the release.

Named ‘The Sam­pli­fy Project’, ADLC is the first drone deliv­ery ser­vice in Europe, approved for trans­port of petro­chem­i­cal sam­ples, and the first world­wide with­in a port’s non-seg­re­gat­ed con­trolled air­space. 

Uni­fly UTM, Enabling Autonomous Avi­a­tion

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, sam­ple trans­port is con­duct­ed by road. Using drone logis­tics reduces trans­port time by up to six times, decreas­es CO2 emis­sions by up to 80 per­cent, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhances oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy for both BASF Antwerp and SGS.

Andres van Swalm, CEO of Uni­fly, com­ment­ed, “The suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion of BVLOS oper­a­tions for petro­chem­i­cal sam­ple trans­port demon­strates the immense poten­tial of autonomous drones in indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions. This project sets a new stan­dard for safe­ty and effi­cien­cy in drone logis­tics.”

Marc Kege­laers, co-Founder of ADLC, added, “Lever­ag­ing the advanced UTM sys­tem of Uni­fly has been instru­men­tal in mak­ing the Sampi­fly Project a real­i­ty. This part­ner­ship has enabled us to meet strin­gent safe­ty require­ments and pio­neer the use of autonomous drones for petro­chem­i­cal sam­ple trans­port, set­ting a new bench­mark for effi­cien­cy and inno­va­tion in the logis­tics indus­try.”

Unifly’s NextGen UTM sys­tem ensures safe drone oper­a­tions at the port of Antwerp with real-time mon­i­tor­ing, auto­mat­ed flight plan­ning, and enhanced sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness, “enabling seam­less BVLOS oper­a­tions.” 

Serv­ing as a con­sul­tant for the Sam­pli­fy Project, Uni­fly played a vital role in obtain­ing flight autho­ri­sa­tions. Since the Antwerp-Bruges Port Author­i­ty already utilis­es the Unifly’s UTM sys­tem, it was instru­men­tal in man­ag­ing the nec­es­sary approvals. 

Andres van Swalm

Oper­a­tional since mid-March 2021, the Port of Antwerp-Bruges DronePor­tal has processed over 5,700 flight autho­ri­sa­tions, play­ing a piv­otal role in the evolv­ing U‑space land­scape. The imple­men­ta­tion of Unifly’s UTM sys­tem at the Port, in coop­er­a­tion with Skey­Drone, has cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment that ful­ly realis­es the poten­tial of the drone indus­try.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.unifly.aero

https://adlc.eu/en

(Top image: Unify/ADLC)

For the lat­est news, insights and con­tent regard­ing the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket, please join the fol­low­ing eVTOL Insights chan­nels: What­sApp, Face­book, Insta­gram, Spo­ti­fy, Apple Pod­casts, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.