With hundreds of thousands of unmanned drones filling the skies, the risk of collisions with aircraft has increased, prompting a local company to come up with a solution.

Hawk Aerospace started looking into the idea in 2013 which led to the Sagro Project being initiated in 2015 through a collaboration with Idox Health (formerly 6pm) and the Institute of Aerospace Technologies of the University of Malta.
The project was funded through the MCST National Research & Innovation scheme to develop technology that could ‘sense and avoid’ collisions between drones and manned aircraft.

The idea was to combine the use of advanced sensors such as cameras and electronic components to allow a drone to detect manned aircraft that may be on collision course, and take evasive action to avoid it.

Although such long-range technology is widely available for large manned aircraft, it is still generally unavailable for drones due to their size.

This high-tech project was completely designed, built, and developed in Malta and involved the expertise and services of Maltese personnel. Hawk was mainly involved in providing design input based on its aviation/drone expertise as well as the flight testing.

Idox Health handled the development of the core software, while the consortium also had the expertise of the University of Malta’s Institute of Aerospace Technologies who built the two of the on-board sensors of the Sagro technology.

Once the first prototype was created, ground testing of the Sagro ‘sense and avoid’ technology commenced, followed by mid-air trials. Following that success, the next step will be to refine product development and consider commercialisation.

The project was funded by the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST) through the National Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement R&I-2013-042). The total funding of the project was around €200,000.

Further details can be obtained from info@hawkaerospace.eu