Skyports Drone Services Conducts “Proof-of-Concept Shore-to-Ship Drone Deliveries in Michigan’s Great Lakes Region”

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices, a glob­al leader in drone deliv­ery and inspec­tion ser­vices for health­care, mar­itime, logis­tics and ener­gy use cas­es, has been con­duct­ing a series of Proof-of-Con­cept, Ship-to-Shore BVLOS drone flights and deliv­er­ies in Michigan’s Great Lakes region, reports a press release.

The release explains, “Con­duct­ed in part­ner­ship with the Michi­gan Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (MDOT), the Michi­gan Office of Future Mobil­i­ty and Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion (OFME) and Newlab, the tri­al is oper­at­ing from DeTour, Michi­gan, and is run­ning from May 7th to May 27th, fly­ing car­go to Inter­lake Steamship ves­sels.” 

It con­tin­ues, “The oper­a­tion looks to val­i­date the ben­e­fits of using drones to sup­ple­ment reg­u­lar ship deliv­er­ies from sup­ply boats, demon­strat­ing the speed, safe­ty, improved sus­tain­abil­i­ty and cost ben­e­fits of mar­itime drone deliv­er­ies. Light car­go such as oil sam­ples, potable water sam­ples, flat & small mail and linens/laundry are being deliv­ered dur­ing the tri­al.”

Alex Brown, Direc­tor of Drone Ser­vices, Sky­ports, com­ment­ed, “We first start­ed deliv­er­ing car­go to ships in Sin­ga­pore in 2021. Since then, we’ve devel­oped our under­stand­ing of mar­itime oper­a­tions, and we know which use cas­es add val­ue for our cus­tomers.” 

He con­tin­ued, “This is our first US mar­itime deliv­ery oper­a­tion and we’ll be look­ing to repli­cate the suc­cess from Sin­ga­pore and Michi­gan to oth­er ports around the coun­try. Michi­gan has cre­at­ed a great inno­va­tion envi­ron­ment for advanced air mobil­i­ty, and we’ll be kick­ing off sev­er­al more flight cam­paigns in the State over the next few months.”

This pilot pro­gram aims to prove the tech­nol­o­gy need­ed for safe and effi­cient drone inte­gra­tion in mar­itime envi­ron­ments. It will gen­er­ate impor­tant insights to help inform the reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments and pol­i­cy frame­works nec­es­sary to scale shore-to-ship drone oper­a­tions, lay­ing the ground­work for the wide­spread adop­tion of drone-based logis­tics in the region.

As part of a wider tri­al, the ini­tial proof of con­cept pilot is the first part of a pro­posed three stages that will demon­strate the fea­si­bil­i­ty of oth­er use cas­es for drone deliv­er­ies.

Dur­ing the ini­tial tri­al Sky­ports is oper­at­ing a Speed­bird DLV‑2, which has a pay­load of up to 8.8lbs, and is capa­ble of oper­at­ing in gust­ing wind­speeds of up to 28mph. 

To facil­i­tate safer, faster car­go deliv­ery and col­lec­tion, the drone is using winch tech­nol­o­gy. Descend­ing to approx­i­mate­ly 50 ft above the deck of the ves­sel to where the crew are wait­ing, the remote pilot deploys the winch that auto­mat­i­cal­ly stops when it detects the pay­load on the deck. Once car­go has been delivered/collected, the crew vacate the area to a safe zone, the remote pilot retracts the winch and flies the drone back to base.

Con­nor McCarthy, AAM Lead at Newlab Detroit, remarked, “We’re demon­strat­ing in real time how unmanned air­craft can move crit­i­cal sup­plies to work­ing ves­sels faster, safer, and with a lighter car­bon foot­print. The insights we col­lect here will help shape pol­i­cy and infra­struc­ture for scaled drone logis­tics across the region, solid­i­fy­ing Michigan’s rep­u­ta­tion as the pre­mier place to build, test, com­mer­cialise and scale next‑generation drone tech­nolo­gies.”

Sky­ports has pro­vid­ed a full end-to-end ser­vice, includ­ing route plan­ning, reg­u­la­to­ry approvals, drone oper­a­tions and data col­lec­tion and analy­sis. The final objec­tive is to pro­vide a report that sum­maris­es the results of the tri­al and applic­a­bil­i­ty to oth­er use cas­es, tar­get­ing per­ma­nent com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in the near future.

Jus­tine John­son, Michi­gan Chief Mobil­i­ty Offi­cer and Head of the OFME, said, “Inno­va­tion doesn’t thrive in iso­la­tion, it needs the right part­ner­ships, pol­i­cy sup­port, and real-world test­ing to suc­ceed. This pilot reflects our com­mit­ment to ‘Make it in Michi­gan’ by cre­at­ing an ecosys­tem where new tech­nolo­gies can tru­ly take flight.”

(L‑R: Ches­ka Rojas, Sky­ports; Ken Erb, Inter­lake; Paul Chris­tensen, Inter­lake; Bren­dan O’Con­nor, Inter­lake; Mark Bark­er, Inter­lake; Cur­tis Reed, Sky­ports; Con­nor McCarthy, Newlab; Ryan Palmer, Sky­ports)

Bradley C. Wieferich, State Trans­porta­tion Direc­tor, MDOT, added, “Michi­gan already has a robust net­work of avi­a­tion infra­struc­ture and cap­i­tal­is­ing on that sys­tem makes the day, when ship­ping crit­i­cal prod­ucts via AAM becomes a rou­tine prac­tice clos­er than ever.”

For more Infor­ma­tion 

www.skyportsdroneservices.com

www.interlakemaritimeservices.com

MichiganBusiness.org/OFME

(Images: Sky­ports)

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