Altitude Angel to become strategic data partner for new drone ops platform [VIDEO]

While unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are still awaiting the regulations that will unleash their full potential, one aviation tech firm in the United Kingdom is building the massive cloud-based data services that will be needed to control the complexity of future drone activities.

The company, Altitude Angel, said today that it will become the geodata supplier to a new drone operations management platform, called Dronecloud, which will launch in June.

Dronecloud, Altitude Angel said, it will be the only UAV platform to unify all of the most popular compliance workflows, using “real business tools” that are required to grow a successful drone operation. Altitude Angel’s airspace management platform, called GuardianUTM, will power Dronecloud with real-time geospatial data for use in parts of Europe and the United States.

The platform will replace AirMap, which was used during Altitude Angel’s earlier “beta-test” phase of the Dronecloud service, and has been in development for the last five years, including testing performed in 13 countries.

Dronecloud gives operators and clients the ability to communicate within a job, eliminating the need for tracking down e-mail trails, and supplying all users with instant knowledge of each job’s history, progress and status. Dronecloud, the company said, is the only software available today that combines job commissioning, accounting, data collection, data delivery and visualization in one place.

By using GuardianUTM to handle the complex work of managing multiple drones at the same time on one platform, Toby Potter, Altitude Angel’s vice president of sales and partnerships, the firm’s customers can “focus on what’s important to them, delivering high-quality applications to drone operators.” See this video on GueardianUTM for more details:

The integration of Altitude Angel data into Dronecloud’s compliance workflow will give the new platform “the best possible data in the air and on the ground,” said Dave Bush, director of Dronecloud. “The team at Altitude Angel shares the same entrepreneurial values, backed up with a track record of real innovation and an ambitious vision for the future of the industry.”

The foundation components of GuardianUTM’s operating system are also available to enable third-party UAV traffic management developers to incorporate enterprise-grade data and services into their services.

Founded in 2014, Altitude Angel is headquartered in Reading, U.K., and has an open and available developer platform that can be viewed here.

GuardianUTM is being deployed by NATS, the U.K.’s main air navigation service provider, and was demonstrated as part of ‘Operation Zenith’ in 2018, offering enhanced airport safeguarding and automated approvals to fly in controlled airspace.