Inmarsat and Reliable Robotics collaborate on remotely piloted aircraft satcoms

Inmarsat will col­lab­o­rate with Reli­able Robot­ics, a leader in safe­ty-enhanc­ing air­craft automa­tion sys­tems, to sup­port the safe, secure and effi­cient inte­gra­tion of remote­ly pilot­ed air­craft sys­tems into the US Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem and air­space world­wide.

Inmarsat’s Velaris satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice pro­vides con­nec­tiv­i­ty between remote pilots and air­craft for air­space access, includ­ing voice and dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion links with air traf­fic con­trol.

Joel Kloost­er, senior VP of air­craft oper­a­tions and safe­ty at Inmarsat Avi­a­tion, said: “Secure and con­sis­tent trans­mis­sion of dig­i­tal com­mands, teleme­try and voice data is crit­i­cal to remote air­craft oper­a­tion, where avail­abil­i­ty and integri­ty of the link are essen­tial to the over­all per­for­mance. We’re proud to play a cru­cial role in bring­ing this world-first sat­com solu­tion to mar­ket with Reli­able Robot­ics.”

Velaris, pow­ered by Inmarsat’s high-reli­a­bil­i­ty ELERA net­work, will pro­vide a secure com­mand and con­trol link to con­nect Reliable’s remote pilots to its air­craft fleet with com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age for com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

A con­nec­tion is estab­lished using a small onboard satel­lite ter­mi­nal and infor­ma­tion flows through a pri­vate net­work with equip­ment designed to meet the FAA’s recog­nised means of com­pli­ance and tech­ni­cal stan­dards for air­borne avion­ics.

Myles Goeller, chief busi­ness offi­cer at Reli­able Robot­ics, said: “We great­ly appre­ci­ate the time and resources Inmarsat has devot­ed to tai­lor a glob­al satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions solu­tion to our tech­ni­cal, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial needs. It is excit­ing to work with Inmarsat to deploy a robust sat­com sys­tem that will sup­port the scal­ing of remote­ly oper­at­ed air­craft and allow us to fly almost any­where.”

Reli­able Robot­ics is devel­op­ing a cer­ti­fi­able sys­tem that enables con­tin­u­ous autopi­lot engage­ment through all phas­es of flight, includ­ing taxi, take­off and land­ing with a remote pilot super­vis­ing oper­a­tions.

A satel­lite-based con­trol and com­mu­ni­ca­tion link between the remote pilot and the air­craft pro­vides high­er pre­ci­sion nav­i­ga­tion, sophis­ti­cat­ed flight plan­ning capa­bil­i­ties and more robust flight con­trols to bet­ter man­age air­craft and envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions, and improve safe­ty, reduc­ing the occur­rence of com­mon caus­es of avi­a­tion acci­dents.

In Jan­u­ary, Inmarsat and the Euro­pean Space Agency announced the devel­op­ment of a com­pact satel­lite ter­mi­nal for uncrewed aer­i­al vehi­cles as part of the Iris air traf­fic mod­erni­sa­tion pro­gramme, paving the way for them to be safe­ly inte­grat­ed into com­mer­cial air­space.

Inmarsat part­ners with TTP to has­ten inte­gra­tion of UAVs into com­mer­cial air­space