Drone service data provider SkyX is making its Farnborough Airshow debut as part of the Ontario Aerospace Pavilion (Hall 4, Stand 4640). The SkyX system combines a long-range VTOL aircraft, remote charging stations, and a custom-built operating system to enable autonomous flight wherever there is cellular telephone signal coverage. The system already has been tested on a 102-km beyond visual line of sight flight (BVLOS) in Mexico that was remotely controlled from Toronto. The company's next-generation UAS, SkyTwo, will have even greater range and payload capabilities.

CEO Didi Horn stressed that SkyX is a data company, not a drone manufacturer. The legacy, all-electric  SkyOne aircraft flies at speeds of approximately 100 kph for one hour and during the course of that hour can garner 20,000 to 30,000 georeferenced images. Synchronizing the data into time and space makes it easy to locate anomalies, which are then analyzed and presented to a customer in a report. Reports can be generated in as little as one hour.

The Mexico flight involved patrolling a pipeline, where 102 anomalies were noted along 150 km. “That pipeline is usually monitored by one man on horseback due to the terrain. We were able to accomplish in one hour what would have taken one person more than one week,” said Horn. SkyX can add predictive analytics to the data in its reports to add value, such as snow cover and how it is likely to degrade rail and pipelines, Horn said. SkyOne and SkyTwo aircraft can be equipped with a variety of sensor packages, including high-resolution visual spectrum, lidar, optical gas imaging, and thermal imaging.

SkyX was launched a year ago and already has three long-term customer contracts, is in discussions with leading international energy companies, and is building its 24th aircraft. Most of the company's flights are at altitudes below 400 feet agl. Customers are charged for the actual distance flown and, separately, the reports. The company's most unusual contract to date was wildlife patrol and poaching prevention in a large, remote, and hot area in the Middle East that cannot easily to accessed by ground vehicles 

Horn said the “X” charging stations, distributed every 80 to 100 km,  give SkyX aircraft virtually unlimited range. “We are the only company with a VTOL aircraft that transitions to the more efficient fixed-wing flight and combines that with remote charging stations. We don’t really need to return to home. We could in theory set up a flight that is 1,500-km long with a number of X stations and that is something a basic quadcopter could never achieve.”

Horn said such long flights are necessary to patrol infrastructure such as the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline that will run from Canada to the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. “We can cover the entire distance with a couple of airplanes in two to three days tops.  No other system can do that with such accuracy,” he concluded.