Skydio secures BVLOS approval for remote drone operations in Japan

US drone man­u­fac­tur­er Sky­dio this week announced that the Japan Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau (JCAB) has grant­ed nation­wide approval to remote­ly fly drones beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS).

The approval enables stream­lined BVLOS oper­a­tion using Sky­dio Dock and Remote Oper­a­tions for mon­i­tor­ing com­plex infra­struc­ture, inspect­ing a secu­ri­ty perime­ter, or assess­ing a site fol­low­ing a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter.

Sky­dio claims its AI and autonomous tech­nol­o­gy allows drones to safe­ly fly mis­sions in close prox­im­i­ty to struc­tures in a way that would be dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble with man­u­al drones, even when oper­at­ed remote­ly with­out a pilot.

Under the JCAB approval, there is no require­ment to use addi­tion­al crew mem­bers such as visu­al observers or tech­nol­o­gy to detect crewed air­craft, elim­i­nat­ing some of the great­est chal­lenges faced by drone oper­a­tors.

The approval is not loca­tion or time spe­cif­ic; it applies across Japan, with lim­it­ed excep­tions. Noti­fi­ca­tion of the flight area is required pri­or to take­off using JCAB’s web por­tal. Oper­a­tors can now remote­ly inspect crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture like build­ings, roads, pow­er plants and the scenes of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters with­out plac­ing peo­ple at risk.

Adam Bry, CEO at Sky­dio, said: “With Sky­dio Dock and Remote Oper­a­tions, organ­i­sa­tions have access to real-time data to make deci­sions that keep their work­ers safe and make their oper­a­tions more effi­cient. Autonomous remote drone oper­a­tions enable inspec­tions of hard-to-reach and dan­ger­ous areas from the safe­ty of an office.”

Found­ed in 2014, Sky­dio is made up of lead­ing experts in AI, robot­ics, cam­eras, and elec­tric vehi­cles from top com­pa­nies, research labs, and uni­ver­si­ties from around the world.

The com­pa­ny designs, assem­bles, and sup­ports its prod­ucts in the US from its head­quar­ters in San Mateo, Cal­i­for­nia, and is backed by investors that include Andreessen Horowitz, Lev­i­tate Cap­i­tal, Next47, IVP, Play­ground, and NVIDIA.