Nitin Gadkari unveils Unmanned Air Traffic Management System, Skye UTM
Skye UTM is an aerial traffic management platform, designed to provide situational awareness, autonomous navigation, risk assessment, and traffic management to all drone and other aerial mobility operators operating in the area.
Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister for Road and Highways during the launch of Skye UTM along with Ankit Kumar, CEO, Skye Air
Gurugram-based Skye Air Mobility announced the inauguration of Skye UTM, an unmanned traffic management system, in New Delhi. Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister for Road and Highways, unveiled the software, which includes a number of unique and ground-breaking capabilities, like the Skye tunnel.
What exactly is Skye UTM? It is a cloud-based aerial traffic management system that connects unmanned and manned aviation airspace. Skye UTM is an aerial traffic management platform, designed to provide situational awareness, autonomous navigation, risk assessment, and traffic management to all drone and other aerial mobility operators operating in the area.
“Drone is a futuristic technology, and its potential is beyond imagination. Drones make activities extremely efficient and cost effective. Drones are going to be used across sectors, from construction, agriculture, healthcare, defence, infrastructure, surveying, real estate, and transport. Drone companies will even monitor highways and road construction. There is a lot of research happening that will certainly help scale its usage, and we wish Skye Air the best of luck in taking this futuristic technology even further,” said Gadkari
He further commented that his ministry will soon invite participation from drone start-ups to be deployed for real-time monitoring & speed up highway constructions and also keep a check on fatal road accidents. A tender will be floated very soon by the ministry to execute the operation.
Ankit Kumar, CEO, Skye Air said, “With the higher adoption of drones and other aerial vehicles by various end users, the number of drones in the sky is increasing massively. The requirement for situational awareness has become a necessity, the drone pilots, regulators and controllers need real-time information around the drones in the sky. Skye UTM is a game changer in this regard providing situational awareness to both regulators and pilots, by digitally establishing communication with the drones and connecting traffic across the airspace. The nature of its Autonomy helps to have real-time tracking and awareness. We are delighted to have the Hon'ble minister Shri Nitin Gadkari ji launch the Skye UTM platform which will maximize airspace safety while supporting wider adoption of drones/other aerial vehicles."
Skye UTM has already supported 300+ successful BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) drone flights till now. The Skye UTM captures more than 255+ parameters of UAV movements and stores them into its ‘Blackbox’ which is a published systematic description of the entire flight. The platform offers the first 3-Dimensional view of the drone airspace along with operations and regulations mapping servers which offer the latest airspace status, verified paths, and display real time UAV movements.
The UTM is a cloud-based traffic management system that connects and communicates with all types of drones, from survey drones to delivery drones to aerial taxis.
"The drone industry is growing multi-fold and the need for UTM is now more than ever to ensure safer skies. Skye UTM offers tons of features enabling situational awareness, handling more than 4000 flights per hour, Pop-up UTM and many others. I believe our proprietary tunnel based navigation is going to be a game changer for enabling higher degree of automation in navigation,” Kumar added.
Skye UTM organises the drone airspace into zones that are designated for high-speed operations, deliveries, big drones, and passenger aircraft. Each of these boundaries allows the airspace to be optimised for the needs of UAVs. Through its cloud architecture and real-time communication APIs, Skye UTM integrates with ANSPs, heli-drones, and all other manned aviation systems to coordinate movements and further strengthen the integrity of the airspace.
The platform offers regulatory access to Air Traffic Controllers and other regulatory authorities allowing them to have real-time drone traffic movement information, pilot information and other necessary data for evaluation and coordination.
