The company behind the global airspace intelligence platform for drones, AirMap, has announced that it is expanding its business in the Asia-Pacific region.
The announcement came on the heels of its recent selection as a program partner of NASA’s TCL4 trials in the US states of Texas and Nevada, along with the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) UAS Traffic Management Pilot Program (UPP) at Virginia Tech University.
The TCL4 trials are testing the interaction between drones within the AirMap Unmanned Traffic Management Systems (UTM) in a variety of urban scenarios, including newsgathering, package delivery, and managing large scale contingencies.
Meanwhile, as a member of the Virginia UPP project, AirMap provides a core set of UTM capabilities for flight planning and telemetry, manned aircraft alerts, deconfliction, and network sharing with other USS provider partners.
AirMap is also said to be continuing its participation in the national UAS Integration Pilot Program (UAS IPP) set by the White House to accelerate the integration of commercial drone operations into the national airspace.
“For example, in North Carolina, AirMap and drone operator Matternet is using drones to deliver much needed medical supplies between Raleigh hospitals,” the company said.
Hon Chu, Head of APAC Business Operations, AirMap, said that with these developments, it is boosting its presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
“We had previously established a joint venture with Rakuten, namely Rakuten AirMap, in Japan, and we are planning to further develop our business in the Asia Pacific region, especially in Hong Kong and Singapore,” Chu said in a statement.
“We look forward to working with civil aviation authorities in multiple markets in APAC,” he said.
Its foray in Asia is a joint venture project launched in March 2017 called Rakuten Airmap, in collaboration with Japanese electronic commerce and Internet company Rakuten to provide an Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) system for drones.
Rakuten entered the commercial drone field in April 2016 with the launch of the Sora Raku drone delivery service, which was then forecast to deliver up to $127.3 billion in global economic impact in the coming years.
The joint venture company set up with AirMap will also provide UTM solutions to drone operators and airspace managers in Japan.
