One of Europe’s big names in unmanned traffic management (UTM) is joining forces with a global leader in the drone station arena.  Belgium-based Unifly last week announced a partnership with EVA, a drone-station and robotics developer. Unifly will marry its UTM tech with EVA’s portable, vertical drone stations.

According to a Unifly press release, the duo hopes to streamline the “integration of drones into the airspace and offer operators [with] an easy-to-deploy solution to support their operational needs.”

EVA, a Brooklyn-based startup, develops vertical stations to serve as connecting nodes between drones and ground stations. The system provides charging and storage solutions that work hand-in-hand with UTM platforms. EVA stations can handle up to 24 drones with quick charging and hosting capability. Use cases include medical supply/parcel delivery, disaster relief, logistics, smart cities, and on-demand infrastructure inspection.

“We are now entering the golden age of the drone industry,” EVA CEO Olivier Le Lann said, adding:

“EVA has always positioned itself as enabling the drone industry to accelerate its missions, accomplishing incredible missions such as delivering healthcare, seeding trees, rescuing people, establishing connections between people and businesses. We followed Unifly impressive tracked global record in Europe, North-America and other continents, and found with Unifly team a great chemistry in supporting our global customers with the best technology.”

Unifly General Manager Laurent Huenaerts agrees:

“A partnership between EVA and Unifly was a no-brainer: our two companies share the same mission to enable large-scale routine drone service applications, we have extremely complementary technologies, and we are both active globally. We believe that this joint solution, combining Unifly’s UTM and drone operations management and EVA’s ground infrastructure, definitely helps to further unlock the economic, societal, and environmental benefits drones have to offer.”

Unifly in the News

August

Leon van de Paswell became Unifly’s newest CEO, succeeding well-known drone industry figure Marc Kegelaers. Van de Pas has been hailed as an expert in bringing disruptive innovations to market, having worked in medical, wireless, navigation, lighting and IoT services.

February

NAV CANADA commissioned Unifly to develop, train and implement a UTM system for Canada’s civil air navigation systems.

2019

• Unifly unveiled a new subsidiary, Unifly ApS – headquartered in Copenhagen – to boost customer support and development in the Scandinavia and Baltic regions.
• The company debuted a new e-Identification and tracking solution for drones during the World ATM Congress in Madrid, the world’s largest international air traffic management exhibition and conference.
• Unifly teamed up with Florida-based drone company Aeronyde to build an integrated, autonomous drone system for public-safety agencies. The UTM system will empower emergency responders to customize drone systems to fit any mission profile and agency size.
• The company joined forces with UNICEF to create the first ever UTM drone corridor in Africa. The “humanitarian drone corridor” in Malawi serves as a dedicated unmanned flight-testing space and includes Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) testing in a territory spanning more than 1,900 square miles up to 1,300 feet above ground level.