“The strategic partners participating in our Series B financing reflect the diversity of the drone ecosystem and the potential of drones to benefit every sector of our economy. Very soon, millions of drones will fly billions of flights. This is a future that depends on safe, autonomous drone operations at scale. AirMap’s technology will make this future possible, allowing the drones of today, and the autonomous drones of tomorrow, to take flight,” said Ben Marcus, CEO, AirMap.
AirMap claims that its airspace intelligence is growing exponentially and soon it would be capable of making precise observations and choose the most optimum route without ever using our own sight to understand the flight environment. And soon after that, it plans to come up with the autonomous drones that can make their own decisions without any human intervention.
“Our Series B round marks the beginning of the next chapter for AirMap. We’re looking forward to quickly bringing AirMap’s airspace management platform and solutions for cybersecurity, geofencing, Unmanned aircraft Traffic Management (UTM), and more to new markets worldwide,” noted Marcus in a blogpost.
Marcus also revealed plans for global expansion by opening offices in Berlin, Germany, and at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Highly content with the growth of the drone industry, he hopes to soon see rules for drone flight over people and beyond visual line of sight. He believes that the combined efforts of the participants of the NASA-FAA Research Transition Team, that includes AirMap, will test UTM technologies in 2017 that will help drones become part of the world’s busiest airspace system.
“Our goal is to help unlock the underlying technologies that will bring about rapid, widespread adoption and transform the whole system of urban travel. We are proud to collaborate with AirMap in helping build the essential safety infrastructure to introduce and secure traffic patterns for autonomous vehicles into the airspace,” said Thomas d’Halluin, CEO, Airbus Ventures.
In another development, AirMap has partnered with senseFly, a producer of mapping drones, to deliver its airspace services to senseFly’s eBee fixed wing drones and albris quadcopter.