Skye Air Mobility, a Gurugram-based drone delivery company with operations across ten states, launched Skye UTM—an unmanned traffic management system for drones—on Tuesday. Union Minister for Road and Highways Nitin Gadkari was also present at the occasion.
This 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. It provides situational awareness, autonomous navigation, risk assessment, and traffic management to all drone or other aerial mobility operators across the airspace.
“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, and drone pilots, regulators, and controllers need real-time information about the drones in the sky,” Ankit Kumar, CEO of Skye Air, said.
“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,” he added.
Skye UTM has supported over 300 BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) drone flights. It captures more than 255 parameters of UAV movements and stores them in its Blackbox—a published systematic description of the entire flight.
The platform offers a three-dimensional view of the drone airspace along with operations and regulations mapping servers, offering the latest airspace status and verified paths, displaying real-time UAV movements.
On the sidelines of the Skye UTM launch, Nitin Gadkari emphasised deploying new technologies in the construction, infrastructure, and highway sectors.
“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,” the minister said.
He added, “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.”
Gadkari said the ministry will invite participation from drone startups for real-time monitoring of highway construction and fatal road accidents. It will soon float a tender to execute the operation.
