Heron AirBridge and Inmarsat partner on unmanned aviation

Heron Air­Bridge is to join Inmarsat’s Velaris Part­ner Net­work to devel­op reg­u­la­to­ry and oper­a­tional frame­works and tech­nolo­gies for safe­ly man­ag­ing drones in urban envi­ron­ments and com­plex air­spaces.

A mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing (MoU) was signed dur­ing Drone Asia 2023 in Sin­ga­pore, with Dr Amy Khor, Senior min­is­ter of state for Trans­port, Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and the Envi­ron­ment attend­ing as Guest of Hon­our.

With strong sup­port from the Sin­ga­pore gov­ern­ment, Heron Air­Bridge is the first unmanned air­craft sys­tem traf­fic man­age­ment (UTM) tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny in South­east Asia to suc­cess­ful­ly build a UTM sys­tem capa­ble of man­ag­ing mul­ti­ple drone oper­a­tors.

The new part­ner­ship will enable Heron Air­Bridge and Inmarsat to com­bine their capa­bil­i­ties and show­case how satel­lite-based tech­nol­o­gy can sup­port the safe inte­gra­tion of unmanned air­craft into Singapore’s com­mer­cial air­space.

Inmarsat will pro­vide Heron Air­Bridge with its low size, weight, pow­er and cost (SWaP‑C) ter­mi­nals to deliv­er a secure datalink for beyond vis­i­ble line of sight (BVLOS) drone oper­a­tions — the first appli­ca­tion of Velaris in the Asia Pacif­ic region.

The two com­pa­nies intend to devel­op oper­a­tional stan­dards, frame­works and tech­nolo­gies to boost UAV num­bers in Singapore’s air­space and serve as a blue­print for future glob­al roll-out.

“Our part­ner­ship with Inmarsat is a major step towards increas­ing UAV inte­gra­tion into the city’s crowd­ed air­space and updat­ing reg­u­la­tions so that our efforts can be repli­cat­ed world­wide,” said Ryan Lee, CEO and co-founder of Heron Air­Bridge.

“We look to cre­ate val­ue by util­is­ing low-lev­el air­space glob­al­ly. Inmarsat was a vital part­ner in pow­er­ing the move­ment with Velaris by ensur­ing that we are equipped with the core net­work and datalink capa­bil­i­ties we need to dri­ve UAV inte­gra­tion.”

Joel Kloost­er, senior vice pres­i­dent of air­craft oper­a­tions and safe­ty at Inmarsat, added: “Uncrewed avi­a­tion is a sec­tor poised for growth, and the air vehi­cles and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy are ready, but unlock­ing their poten­tial hinges on con­sis­tent, glob­al reg­u­la­to­ry progress.

“Togeth­er with Heron, we are cre­at­ing a blue­print for the inte­grat­ed air­space of the future. Lever­ag­ing Inmarsat’s Velaris tech­nol­o­gy, cou­pled with Heron’s region­al domain exper­tise, will ensure oper­a­tors of air­space and UAVs have the tools need­ed to dri­ve reg­u­la­to­ry accep­tance in the region and beyond.”

Ear­li­er this month, Heron Air­Bridge announced a strate­gic alliance with CWT Aero­space and the Sin­ga­pore Asso­ci­a­tion of Ship­sup­pli­ers and Ser­vices to col­lab­o­rate on mar­itime drone logis­tics.

Sin­ga­pore: SASS, Heron Air­Bridge, CWT Aero­space col­lab­o­rate on mar­itime drone oper­a­tions