LikeAbird joins Inmarsat’s Velaris uncrewed aviation partner network

Inmarsat has wel­comed Like­Abird, a spe­cial­ist in the UAV and robot­ics indus­tries, as the lat­est com­pa­ny to join its Velaris Part­ner Net­work to inte­grate with Inmarsat’s core minia­turised sat­com ter­mi­nal tech­nol­o­gy, with a first release expect­ed in ear­ly 2023.

Like­Abird will meet the evolv­ing needs of cus­tomers across a range of UAV mar­kets, by inte­grat­ing Inmarsat’s Velaris con­nec­tiv­i­ty ser­vice with its flight con­trollers, autopi­lots, and beyAIR Mod­u­lar Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Gate­way, which com­bines short to medi­um-range radio and redun­dant cel­lu­lar datalinks with sat­com, remov­ing the need to have addi­tion­al ter­mi­nals onboard.

Inmarsat senior direc­tor of advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM) Antho­ny Spounc­er said: “Velaris is going from strength to strength and this excit­ing new col­lab­o­ra­tion with Like­Abird has fur­ther cement­ed our part­ner net­work as the de-fac­to cen­tre of excel­lence for UAV tech­nolo­gies.

“Inmarsat does far more than pro­vide datalink tech­nolo­gies — our com­pa­ny is built on a cul­ture of indus­try col­lab­o­ra­tion using our cut­ting-edge satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tion capa­bil­i­ties to deliv­er bespoke solu­tions and pro­vid­ing a one-stop shop to access UAV solu­tions eas­i­ly and afford­ably.”

LikeAbird’s chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer Jarno Puff added: “This part­ner­ship opens the door to many more oppor­tu­ni­ties for us, so we can col­lab­o­rate with key tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tors across the breadth of the uncrewed avi­a­tion indus­try and ulti­mate­ly have an impact on the future of avi­a­tion.”

Inmarsat’s Velaris Part­ner Net­work is an ecosys­tem of lead­ing com­pa­nies ded­i­cat­ed to pio­neer­ing inno­va­tions to facil­i­tate safe and secure UAV oper­a­tions util­is­ing Inmarsat’s Velaris glob­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty solu­tion pow­ered by the ELERA glob­al satel­lite net­work, and builds on the company’s exper­tise of more than 30 years in air traf­fic man­age­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

As the network’s first sys­tems inte­gra­tor part­ner, Like­Abird will col­lab­o­rate with Inmarsat to dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment and rein­force Velaris as the BVLOS ser­vice of choice.

In July, Flight Crowd joined Inmarsat’s Velaris Part­ner Net­work at the Farn­bor­ough Air­show 2022, launched in 2021 to facil­i­tate safe and secure AAM oper­a­tions.

Flight Crowd joins Inmarsat’s Velaris Part­ner Net­work at Farn­bor­ough Air­show 2022

In May, Bell­wether Indus­tries col­lab­o­rat­ed with Inmarsat to explore how satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions can opti­mise the future of intra-city trans­porta­tion ser­vices, with a focus on safe­ty, reg­u­la­tion and inno­va­tion.

Bell­wether Indus­tries joins Inmarsat’s Velaris net­work to ensure safe intra-city trav­el for urban air mobil­i­ty