Skyroads lands $20m order from Riedel Communications for its automated ‘SKYBOT-CAM’ at SailGP

Sky­roads is cre­at­ing a sys­tem that will enable ful­ly-auto­mat­ed pas­sen­ger and car­go drones to fly over pop­u­lat­ed urban areas, with SKYBOT-CAM as the first prod­uct iter­a­tion for Sky­roads’ infra­struc­ture in the sky. 

SKYBOT-CAM is an ear­ly appli­ca­tion of the lat­er avi­a­tion-type, cer­ti­fied solu­tion which Sky­roads says will pave the way to the auto­mat­ed trans­port of peo­ple and heavy goods.

It will deliv­er broad­cast imagery of SailGP’s events by replac­ing heli­copters, and will com­bine high pay­load drones and pro­fes­sion­al broad­cast, gyro sta­bilised cam­era sys­tems with live video, audio and data down­links. Sky­roads will lever­age its fail-safe, auto­mat­ed flight guid­ance sys­tem and mul­ti-vehi­cle fleet to cre­ate new con­tent at a cost point com­pa­ra­ble to heli­copter oper­a­tion, while reduc­ing car­bon and noise emis­sions.

SKYBOT-CAM will be intro­duced at Sail­GP to facil­i­tate and sup­port the test oper­a­tion, and after first imple­men­ta­tion at Sail­GP in 2024, will become avail­able for all pub­lic events to be used with SailGP’s Aug­ment­ed real­i­ty Live­Line­FX.

Achim Kostron, CCO, Sky­roads said: “Our SKYBOT-CAM Sys­tem is an excel­lent way to imple­ment ear­ly appli­ca­tions of our lat­er avi­a­tion-type, cer­ti­fied self-fly­ing-sys­tem. We are delight­ed to embark on this project with the most respect­ed part­ners in their field, Riedel and Sail­GP.” 

In Novem­ber 2021, Sky­roads joined Supernal’s Air­space Man­age­ment Con­sor­tium, to serve as a resource for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) to shape com­mon oper­at­ing and design stan­dards that sup­port indus­try devel­op­ment.

Sky­roads also com­plet­ed the first suc­cess­ful flight demon­stra­tion of its Traf­fic Man­age­ment Sys­tem pro­to­type, con­duct­ed in Tannheim, Ger­many, to show­case the on-board flight guard­ing sys­tem or Blue­box, which com­mu­ni­cates with the drone’s flight con­trol com­put­er and the ground sys­tem via a cel­lu­lar net­work.

War­ren Jones, Direc­tor of Tech­nol­o­gy at Sail­GP, added: “Today’s pro­fes­sion­al air­borne broad­cast cam­era sys­tems are main­ly heli­copter based and require enor­mous organ­i­sa­tion­al, tech­ni­cal, and bud­getary effort for a plat­form that is unsus­tain­able in the long run.

“Sail­GP Tech­nolo­gies stands for inno­va­tion in sus­tain­able sports under the slo­gan ‘Bet­ter Sport – Bet­ter Future’ and it is part­ner­ships with com­pa­nies like Riedel and Sky­roads that allow us to achieve this.”

Riedel Group CEO and Founder Thomas Riedel, said: “We are join­ing forces with Sky­roads and Sail­GP Tech­nolo­gies to take sus­tain­abil­i­ty and safe­ty to a new lev­el, and pro­vide even more spec­tac­u­lar images from the pin­na­cle of sail rac­ing. 

“This strate­gic part­ner­ship reflects our com­mit­ment and vision to enhance inno­va­tion in order to cre­ate future-ori­ent­ed for­mats.”

Sky­roads AG was found­ed in 2019 by CEO Corvin Huber and a pio­neer­ing team of entre­pre­neurs, engi­neers and indus­try experts who are unit­ed by one goal: Make fly­ing acces­si­ble for every­one. 

The start­up is devel­op­ing an Auto­mat­ed Air­space Man­age­ment and Vehi­cle Guid­ance Sys­tem (AAVS) to man­age pas­sen­ger and car­go drones in the demand­ing envi­ron­ment over dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed met­ro­pol­i­tan areas. AAVS enables Urban Air Mobil­i­ty to scale safe­ly and effi­cient­ly by open­ing a cer­ti­fi­able path­way to automa­tion.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Sky­roads pub­lished its sec­ond white paper which seeks to address the issue of auton­o­my for the devel­op­ment of advanced air mobil­i­ty.