ST Engineering, Sumitomo Corporation and Skyports have created a consortium to provide unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) services for shore-to-ship parcel delivery in Singapore.
Each consortium member will provide respective operational and technological capabilities to expand the use of UAVs for the deliveries of maritime essentials to vessels at anchorage.
During a nine-month pilot programme, the consortium will engage key customers for maritime UAV deliveries, with the goal of establishing a UAV delivery network capable of carrying parcel payloads up to 10kg.
ST Engineering will provide the UAV technology using its end-to-end solution – DroNet; Skyports will jointly conduct the Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) flight operations with ST Engineering; while Sumitomo Corporation will provide go-to-market support, including its own fleet of vessels. All three partners in the consortium will undertake business development activities by leveraging existing maritime networks.
ST Engineering has already been testing and developing autonomous solutions to enable BVLOS UAV operations for shore-to-ship delivery in close collaboration with regulators and industry partners. Through funding support from the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore’ (CAAS) Call-for-Proposals, the group recently completed the initial development of an UAV system for shore-to-ship parcel delivery based on its in-house DroNet solution.
Furthermore, a collaborative effort with Wilhelmsen Ships Service has helped to strengthen the commercialisation and operational aspects during solution development, ST Engineering.
Teong Soo Soon, VP & head of UAV systems at ST Engineering, said, “UAV systems have evolved rapidly in recent years to emerge as safe and robust alternatives to traditionally labour- and time-intensive missions.
“We are excited to be partnering Sumitomo Corporation and SkyPorts in the pilot launch of unmanned services for shore-to-ship parcel delivery after spending close to two years of R&D efforts to develop the solution. We look forward to being a strong enabler for customers which wish to leverage unmanned technology to inject higher efficiency and sustainability into their operations.”
Compared to the traditional form of delivery by boats, UAV operations can reduce response time and speed up turnaround for shore-to-ship delivery, in addition to reducing logistics costs, the partnership said. Replacing launch boat delivery with UAV also helps to reduce carbon emissions and contribute to the maritime industry’s overall efforts to operate sustainably.
