Drone manufacturer Yuneec International and communications provider Mobilicom have teamed up to offer UAV solutions to the enterprise and government markets.

The partnership’s focus will be the development of two commercial and government drone solutions. Both will be based on a combination of Yuneec´s H520 hexacopter and Mobilicom´s SkyHopper and LTE technology.

The end products will be called H520 SkyHopper and H520 SkyHopper LTE.

Mobilicom’s SkyHopper is what the company describes as a “holistic solution” for commercial and industrial unmanned vehicles. The system provides ground teams with an enhanced communications link for control, telemetry and video or payload data sharing.

Yuneec and Mobilicom target sensitive government and enterprise ops

Crucially, the new platforms will incorporate high-end cybersecurity and encryption with dedicated frequencies and interference-avoidance capabilities.

SkyHopper’s security and encryption mechanisms aim to protect data from cyber attacks. “Our advanced proprietary communication system along with our encryption mechanism makes it nearly impossible to penetrate,” claims Mobilicom.

“In listening to the needs of our commercial & federal customers within this segment, it was our objective to come up with a solution that would answer their pain points. The partnership with Mobilicom enables us to successfully address these unmet needs and offer them two groundbreaking products”, stated Joe Schamuhn, VP of Global Sales for Yuneec International.

The new drone solutions aimed at for long-range, BVLOS and urban operations within applications including security, public safety, disaster relief, and naval operations.

Security drone data & interference avoidance

Mobilicom’s SkyHopper and LTE technology will give Yuneec’s commercial drones high-end validated encryption, dedicated and ISM frequency bands, software defined radio or LTE + secured server data links and ISM jamming resistance.

Both models are designed to mitigate backdoor cyber risks that are of high concern by government organizations in leading western countries.

Mobilicom’s CEO, Oren Elkayam, said, “SkyHopper brings a high-end, end-to-end solution for the government, federal and commercial market, embedded into Yuneec’s mass marketed proven commercial drone system. This offering serves as an unmatchable, cost-effective drone solution for the commercial and government market.”

Mobilicom and Yuneec’s joint drone solution was officially announced at UTSec, the Summit for Drones, Unmanned Technology and Security in Nuremberg, Germany this week.

Yuneec has made a concerted effort to appeal to industrial and government customers who may have been put off by DJI’s cybersecurity issues in recent times. Last year the Chinese manufacturer signed a deal- announced at Interdrone – with 3DR and the open-source Dronecode project, to start offering joint services to government customers.