As Gotonomi moves from trials toward scalable deployment, at BCN Drone Days General Manager Matthew Hill discussed manufacturing plans, commercial traction, and how the Velaris SATCOM offering differentiates itself in the evolving drone communications market.
Gotonomi is a technology provider and we are eager to support the industry as we approach scale. We’ve manufactured 160 terminals to date and they are on evaluation and in commercial service with key customers, key partners. We’ve manufactured all of those at our facilities at The Technology Partnership (TTP) in Cambridge but that is not viable for scale.
We’re now working with a contract electronics manufacturer based in the UK to be able to approach scale of 1,000-5,000 units a year and if scale goes beyond that, that company has sites in India, sites in the US and Eastern Europe to enable scale of manufacturer in those territories.
Is Gotonomi engaged only in evaluation and trials or do you also have commercial customers?
Gotonomi is at a point in its lifetime where we are very keen to support key partners going through their own evaluation, their own development of technology, but we also have platforms with drone operators who have proven the efficacy of our system.
They like the low size, weight, power, and cost of the Gotonomi Velaris terminals. They’re now selling on our behalf. We are providing AIR6 Systems with an option for a SATCOM enabled drone and they’re selling in the marketplace today for commercial operations.
Operators have a choice over SATCOM providers and the associated hardware. How do Gotonomi and Viasat compare to other systems?
We are fully aware that there’s multiple communication platforms that operators can choose and that is great for competition. A key differentiator for the Viasat Velaris network is 200Kbps on a background service. This allows transmission of both C2 data and payload data. As part of the BCN Drone Days event this was demonstrated twice, with real-time video transmission over the Gotonomi Velaris Multilink terminal. Some satellite providers do not have that bandwidth. Clearly there is a satellite provider who provides a lot of bandwidth but they are also a supplier to consumers. We are not in the consumer market.
We are delighted to benefit from Viasat, and what was Inmarsat’s, legacy of providing safety critical services to maritime and the commercial aviation sector over decades of service. That is what operators in this market can then rely on.
