Customer: Skyports Drone Services

Background
Skyports Drone Services (Skyports), the global leader in drone logistics, surveys, and monitoring has become a trusted service partner for many customers pushing the boundaries of unmanned aerial advancements. No stranger to successful commercial operations, Skyports conducts daily commercial drone deliveries at the Port of Singapore, operates offshore logistics flights to support Norwegian energy company Equinor in the North Sea, and entered a partnership with the Royal Mail to launch inter-island drone delivery in Scotland. Recently, the venture-backed drone service provider completed a world-first drone trial in partnership with the Northumbrian Water Group that is revolutionizing how drinking water suppliers monitor the water quality in river and coastal waterways Leveraging the second generation of the A2Z Drone Delivery Rapid Deliver System (the RDS2), Skyports flew autonomous missions collecting water data from a tether-deployed sensor array. The successful trials are a significant advancement for environmental management entities that have historically relied on labor-intensive data collection processes that usually required manual sample collection across wide areas.

Customer Needs
Water pollution is an ongoing worldwide issue, and in the United Kingdom the government has taken an aggressive approach to monitoring for pollutants in its waterways and coastal areas. Routine water quality monitoring is one of the keys to being able to rapidly respond to polluting activities. Currently, standard water monitoring practices are largely done manually, with personnel trekking to various rivers, lakes and shorelines to collect physical water samples, then transporting those samples to the lab for analysis. With sample collection locations spread through rural locations and vast expanses, and necessary even during adverse weather conditions, the traditional process often proves difficult, potentially dangerous to personnel, and quite time-consuming.

“The way it’s done at the moment is you’ve either got these static sensors which are permanently sending data all the time, or you’ve literally got people who go out and manually take the water samples, put it in a jar and test it back at the lab,” Alex Brown, Director of Skyports Drone Services explained to Aviation Week.

Skyports and technology partner, Makutu, developed a highly automated UAV solution that would streamline this data collection while reducing the necessary staff in the field. With this drone-born sensor array, operators could access hard-to-reach areas, reduce carbon impact, gather more data over a greater area, and obtain faster results. “The [permanent] sensors can work well in certain areas, but they are quite expensive and there are issues around things like maintenance, land access and planning,” Brown adds. “And sending people to the edge of these waterways in the middle of winter is not only more expensive, but potentially dangerous.”

For its data collection trials, Skyports deployed its Speedbird Aero UAV platform to carry a unique water sensor array developed by Makuku. The speedy UAV allowed operators to sample multiple water sources on each mission before returning to recharge batteries, and an integrated 4G wireless transmission network allowed sample data to be relayed back to the Northumbrian Water lab in near-real-time for analysis. With all of these technological elements coming together to solve this unique challenge, the team also needed a mechanism to lower the sensor array to the subject waterways from altitude.

Solution
To bridge the gap from the Speedbird drone to the waterline, Skyports turned to a trusted commercial winch solution in the A2Z Drone Delivery RDS2. With the drone agnostic RDS2 uniquely capable of integrating with just about any drone airframe, the Skyports team was easily able to attach the drone winch to the Speedbird Aero’s payload compartment. 

The RDS2’s low profile design also helped ensure sufficient clearance for the sensor array slung below the drone allowing the UAV to comfortably land with its payload. The winch also needed to be able to accommodate the weight of the sensor array. Capable of transporting and delivering payloads up to 10kg, and able to reel up payloads up to 5kg, the RDS2 again fit the use case perfectly. 

These payload parameters meant the sensor-carrying drone could quickly fly to its sampling location, lower the array below the water line, and operators would be confident the winch would successfully retrieve the expensive sensors before moving on to its next sampling location. Leveraging the RDS2 commercial drone winch also allowed this data collection to be conducted while the drone maintained a safe altitude above trees where there was no danger of propellers being obstructed by tree limbs and the impacts of propeller noise on people or wildlife nearby would be mitigated.

While the high-tech sensor array was a valuable piece of the puzzle that made these trials successful, the UAV airframe and its onboard computing also represented a significant investment for the team. Because the sensor was being lowered into unknown underwater conditions, the RDS2’s ability to abandon its tether in an emergency meant operators could ensure the safety of the aircraft if the sensor were to become entangled with submerged branches or other obstructions.

Results
Ultimately, the combined capabilities of Skyports engineering and drone teams, the Makuku technology integration team, and the RDS2 commercial drone winch helped ensure the Northumbrian Water Group was successful in this first-in-the-world drone-borne water sample collection trial. 

The successful trials took place in riverways, amid coastal areas, and in an estuary along the northeast of the UK in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Bishop Auckland, and Blyth. With this new technology at its disposal, the Northumbrian Water Group is excited to implement the new capabilities.

“We’re just as passionate as our customers about protecting the environment and improving river and coastal water quality so to have these test flights underway is really exciting,” said Richard Warneford, wastewater director at Northumbrian Water. “There’s a lot of hard work gone into understanding how UAV technology can be used to collect data efficiently, and these successful test flights have proven the validity of it as part of our huge water quality monitoring program.”

Now that the proof-of-concept trials are successful, Skyports intends to continue to advance the reach of the autonomous water collection drones. While the trials were conducted with a visual observer to maintain regulatory compliance, Skyports expects to pursue regulatory approval to conduct beyond- visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) sample collection in the future which would allow the service to scale, improving cost, safety and efficiency of these data collection activities.

“Basically, the drone comes out of the box, flies beyond visual line of sight, lowers the sensor into the water, tests the water, goes to three or four other locations, goes back to the box, swaps its battery and cracks on all day,” Brown told Aviation Week. “That’s our vision for the end state of this, whether it comes in 2026 or 2027.”

*Photo credits: Skyports Drone Services and IVTV Tyne Tees.