Speedbird Aero partners with High Lander on drone delivery in Latin America

Speed­bird Aero, a drone deliv­ery com­pa­ny head­quar­tered in Brazil, has signed with High Lan­der, an uncrewed traf­fic man­age­ment (UTM) devel­op­er and ser­vice provider from Israel.

As the drone deliv­ery sec­tor con­tin­ues to expand world­wide, the need for robust, high-per­for­mance uncrewed air­craft sys­tems (drones) and reli­able air­space man­age­ment is becom­ing crit­i­cal. Speed­bird Aero and High Lan­der pro­vide field-test­ed solu­tions in both of these areas that are already in active use at scale.

By lever­ag­ing Uni­ver­sal UTM, Speed­bird Aero will ensure that its flight oper­a­tions are car­ried out safe­ly and effi­cient­ly with­out endan­ger­ing oth­er air­craft or peo­ple on the ground, while demon­strat­ing to reg­u­la­tors that full over­sight of uncrewed aer­i­al activ­i­ty is pos­si­ble.

Fur­ther­more, the part­ner­ship pro­vides a strate­gic foun­da­tion for a new con­sor­tium of avi­a­tion play­ers through­out the Latin Amer­i­ca region. As part of a strate­gic pro­gram, the two com­pa­nies are cur­rent­ly in touch with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers, includ­ing the Brazil­ian Asso­ci­a­tion of Civ­il Avi­a­tion Pilots (ABRAPAC), the Brazil­ian Nation­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Agency (ANAC), the Brazil­ian Depart­ment of Air­space Con­trol (DECEA), Embraer and Saipher.

Speed­bird Aero man­u­fac­tures UAVs for trans­port and deliv­ery of goods for com­mer­cial, indus­tri­al and health­care pur­pos­es, as well as droneports that pro­vide the sup­port­ing infra­struc­ture for these vehi­cles.

It was the first com­pa­ny to receive reg­u­la­to­ry approval from the ANAC to exe­cute com­mer­cial drone deliv­er­ies, includ­ing BVLOS and night flights, and has part­ners in indus­tries includ­ing food deliv­ery, health­care, and e‑commerce. It oper­ates its drone fleet for logis­tic pur­pos­es across Brazil and oth­er coun­tries, exe­cut­ing over 10,000 deliv­er­ies in its first two years of oper­a­tion.

High Lander’s Uni­ver­sal UTM is a drone-agnos­tic uncrewed traf­fic man­age­ment and auto­mat­ed air traf­fic con­trol sys­tem that coor­di­nates uncrewed aer­i­al vehi­cles in a giv­en area, ensur­ing that this does not clash with crewed air­craft and cre­at­ing the infra­struc­ture to man­age aer­i­al traf­fic with which lega­cy sys­tems have been strug­gling.

It has already been approved to pro­vide UTM ser­vices to the Israeli Nation­al Police Force, and has been suc­cess­ful­ly test­ed for inte­gra­tion with exist­ing nation­al air traf­fic con­trol sys­tems.

Samuel Salo­mao, chief prod­uct offi­cer (CPO) of Speed­bird Aero com­ment­ed: “By lever­ag­ing High Lan­der’s UTM tech­nol­o­gy, we can ensure the safe and effi­cient oper­a­tion of our drones, enabling us to deliv­er pack­ages faster and more reli­ably, even in the most com­plex envi­ron­ments.”

High Lan­der will work with ABRAPAC to enable drones to coex­ist with heli­copter traf­fic in Sao Pao­lo with reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies ANAC and DECEA and ATM provider Saipher.

Alon Abel­son, CEO of High Lan­der, added: “Uni­ver­sal UTM is the per­fect com­ple­ment to Speedbird’s next-gen­er­a­tion hard­ware, pro­vid­ing the tools they need to effec­tive­ly mon­i­tor the air­space and pre­vent con­flicts, which enables them to deliv­er pack­ages with greater speed, effi­cien­cy and safe­ty regard­less of loca­tion.”