UMS Skeldar, a rotary and fixed wing UAV platform provider and joint venture between UMS Aero Group and Saab, recently announced two new key partnerships.

A new partnership with Sentient Vision will enable the use of ViDAR (Visual Detection and Ranging) on the Skeldar V-200 drone as an additional payload capability. ViDAR can autonomously detect objects with low electronic signatures (such as small wooden/rubber vessels), very small objects (such as a human in the water or submarine periscopes) and objects in challenging conditions.

In addition, UMS Skeldar’s rotary UAV V-200 was recently selected by Martek Marine to fulfil the European Maritime Safety Agency’s largest ever civilian maritime drone contact.

We talked to UMS Skeldar’s David Willems about these partnerships and where the company is going next.

“Outside the traditional military and blue forces, I think there are going to be more and more civilian operations we can support with our platforms.”

By David Willems, UMS Skeldar