Japan’s Terra Drone this week raised $70 million through a Series B funding round that will support its plans to introduce air traffic management technology for autonomous aircraft and expand its drone operations services. The start-up, which has now raised a total of $83 million, also plans to expand its activities into the U.S. market this year.
Support for the Series B funding round came from Mitsui, SBI Investment Co., Tokyo Land Corporation, Kyushu Electric Power T&D, and Seika Corporation. Funding for Terra Drone’s new Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management venture has also been provided by a public-private partnership known as the Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport and Urban Development.
“Our airspace is going to get more crowded than ever, but most companies today are concentrating only on hardware development,” said Terra Drone CEO Toru Tokushige. “There’s an urgent need for a global air traffic management solution to enable safe and efficient drone and urban air mobility operations, and Terra Drone aims to be the leading player building the digital infrastructure in the sky.”
As part of these efforts, Terra Drone is collaborating with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JASX) to coordinate flight management for crewed and uncrewed aircraft. It is also investing in advances in hardware and software to improve the performance of drones in aerial surveillance work and also in disaster relief missions. Terra Drone's work with JASX also is focused on a project already involving multiple other eVTOL manufacturers and support providers to launch eVTOL air taxi services at the World Expo to be staged in the city of Osaka in 2025.
According to chief operating officer Teppei Seki, Terra Drone is in contact with leading avionics groups such as Honeywell and Thales to develop plans to combine various options for combining hardware such as flight radar, ADS-B, or other sensors with the software it is developing to handle air traffic management for both uncrewed drones and piloted eVTOL aircraft that are set to operate in dense, urban, low-altitude airspace. It is a leading shareholder in Belgium-based uncrewed traffic management specialist Unifly, competing with other companies in this sector, including Air Map and Altitude Angel.
Seki told FutureFlight that Terra Drone is looking to provide a command-and-control solution to sharing and managing traffic data from the new aircraft, which he said will need to operate in a far more decentralized way than current general aviation traffic. "We are going to be able to support very high-density operations in low-altitude airspace," he claimed.
In February 2021, Terra Drone worked with eVTOL developer Volocopter during flight trials at Helsinki International Airports as part of the Gulf of Finland U-Space project to support the integration of uncrewed and pilot new aircraft into public airspace. This project was supposed by the European Union's Single European Sky ATM Research (Sesar) agency and involved a total of 13 partner companies and organizations.
In China, Terra Drone has engaged with autonomous eVTOL vehicle developer EHang about providing uncrewed air traffic management solutions for point-to-point commercial passenger operations that Seki said are expected to be underway in 2023. He added that the company also has discussed a possible collaboration with U.S. eVTOL developer Joby Aviation.
According to Seki, the time is ripe for uncrewed traffic management services to start being fully monetized, which will require aircraft operators, starting with those already using drones, to commit to becoming customers under contract to the air navigation service providers that Terra Drone is looking to support. "This could be based on the number of flights, or it could be more risk-based like car insurance so that if you fly in a riskier area or what you are doing carries more risk you pay more," he explained.
Tokyo-based Terra Drone is already an established drone operator itself. The company provides surveillance and monitoring services in sectors including the oil and gas industry. It is also a shareholder in Belgium-based uncrewed air traffic management specialist Unifly, which competes with companies like Altitude Angel and Air Map.
