The Most Advanced AI Flight Controller for Commercial UAVs

About the product

AIR­Link is an advanced 3‑in‑1 drone avion­ics unit that works as an autopi­lot for an entire fleet of drones, an AI mis­sion com­put­er with object recog­ni­tion and tar­get track­ing, and an LTE link for 3G/4G/5G net­works. The sys­tem was devel­oped after Sky-Drones saw the need for enter­prise UAV orga­ni­za­tions to pro­vide a solu­tion that could sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the time to mar­ket for drones from years to months, or from months to weeks. Fur­ther details about this unique sys­tem from Sky-Drone.

SmartAP + SmartLink = AIRLink

Flight and con­nec­tiv­i­ty man­age­ment, from Smar­tAP MAX and SmartLink to AIR­Link, all in one inte­grat­ed drone avion­ics:

• Inputs for FPV cam­eras and pay­load (HD FPV cam­era includ­ed)
• IMU with 3x over-damped vibra­tion and tem­per­a­ture sta­bi­liza­tion
• Inter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty: Eth­er­net, WiFi, LTE 4G/5G
• Sky-Drones cloud con­nec­tion and remote con­trol
• Inte­grat­ed UTM and BVLOS Ready
• Deploy­ing your own appli­ca­tions

What does AIRLink include?

The most advanced drone avion­ics plat­form and Sky-Drones tech­nol­o­gy for cor­po­rate drones includes:

1. Advanced drone autopi­lot
2. AI com­put­er for auto­mat­ic mis­sions
3. LTE con­nec­tion mod­ule

ArduPilot support

Sky-Drones Tech­nolo­gies recent­ly con­firmed that its AIR­Link AI-pow­ered drone flight con­troller can now work with the open source autopi­lot soft­ware ArduPi­lot.

ArduPi­lot pro­vides users with a wide choice of hard­ware, both open and closed. This free and ful­ly cus­tomiz­able soft­ware is an autopi­lot sys­tem that sup­ports many types of vehi­cles, includ­ing mul­ti­copters, tra­di­tion­al heli­copters, fixed wing air­craft, boats and more.

Specification

Detailed Spec­i­fi­ca­tion of Sky-Drone AIR­Link Sys­tem:

Key functionality

FPV video in HD quality

AIR­Link is equipped with a 1080p HDR cam­era for excep­tion­al image qual­i­ty. The FPV cam­era con­nec­tor is brought to the front side of the unit, which makes its inte­gra­tion and instal­la­tion quick and easy even in the most com­pact UAV designs. The built-in CSI inter­face ensures the low­est pos­si­ble laten­cy (usu­al­ly less than one frame, equal to 17 ms):

• 1080p HDR
• CSI inter­face
• FPV cam­era includ­ed
• Front cam­era con­nec­tor
• Sep­a­rate HDMI for pay­load cam­eras

Full access to the interface

Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and remote com­mu­ni­ca­tion with all inter­faces open from all sides:

• Input pow­er with volt­age and cur­rent con­trol
• Micro SD Card AI Mis­sion Com­put­er
• Flight con­troller micro SD card
• Com­put­er AI Mis­sion USB Type‑C
• PPM input, SBUS out­put, RSSI mon­i­tor

Communication and video

AIR­Link can have a per­ma­nent con­nec­tion to the Inter­net in many ways:

• Eth­er­net port with pow­er out­put
• teleme­try port
• Sec­ond GPS port
• Spare I2C/UART port
• USB Type‑C flight con­troller
• Micro SIM card
• HDMI input port (pay­load cam­era)

Connecting Peripherals

The AIR­Link block includes all the nec­es­sary ports for con­nect­ing var­i­ous periph­er­als:

• Pri­ma­ry GNSS and com­pass port
• Main teleme­try port
• CSI cam­era input
• CAN 1
• CAN 2

Built-in LTE and Wi-Fi modules

In AIR­Link, the unit is already con­nect­ed to the Inter­net from the fac­to­ry:

• SBUS input
• 16 PWM out­put chan­nels
• 2 anten­na LTE (MIMO) con­nec­tors
• Anten­na Wi-Fi con­nec­tor (Avail­able modes: AP mode/Station mode)

AES-256 as standard

The con­nec­tion is encrypt­ed with the AES-256 stan­dard. The net­work key can be eas­i­ly changed at any time when nec­es­sary.

AIR Link telemetry

AIR­Link teleme­try pro­vides unmanned vehi­cles with a broad­band, AES-256 encrypt­ed, pri­vate data link with­in a 20 km radius. It is a sep­a­rate teleme­try mod­ule for Smar­tAP:

• Range 20 km
• AES-256 encryp­tion
• Out­put pow­er 1000 mW (30 dBm)

Ground station settings

Smar­tAP GCS pro­vides all infor­ma­tion about the state of the radio link, includ­ing RSSI, SNR, pack­ets, and also allows you to dynam­i­cal­ly change all the basic set­tings. For exam­ple, oper­at­ing fre­quen­cy, band­width or pow­er can be changed with just one click. Remote mod­ule con­fig­u­ra­tion is done auto­mat­i­cal­ly via the ground mod­ule.

AIR Link Versions

The devel­op­er offers AIR­Link in three ver­sions:

AIR Link Core

Sky-Drones will make the units work inter­nal­ly with­out an exter­nal alu­minum cas­ing to give cor­po­rate cus­tomers the abil­i­ty to inte­grate it direct­ly into their fleet pro­duc­tion, no mat­ter how com­plex the design. The devel­op­er will also help you ensure that your UAV spec­i­fi­ca­tions meet the needs of AIR­Link devices. Key fea­tures of the ver­sion:

• Rel­e­vant for drone man­u­fac­tur­ers with medi­um- and large-scale pro­duc­tion
• Deep inte­gra­tion
• Non-ITAR
• Made in the UK
• Ship­ping with­in 2 days
• Engi­neer­ing sup­port from Sky-Drones

AIRLink Enterprise

The devices are deliv­ered as designed and man­u­fac­tured by the devel­op­er, and are ready for imme­di­ate con­nec­tion to the UAV. Key fea­tures of the ver­sion:

• For drone devel­op­ers with small and medi­um vol­ume pro­duc­tion
• Easy Instal­la­tion
• Non-ITAR
• Made in the UK
• Ship­ping with­in 1–2 days
• Engi­neer­ing sup­port from Sky-Drones

AIRLink Reference Design

Sky-Drones is ready to offer licens­es to large UAV man­u­fac­tur­ers for self-cre­ation of devices, which will save time and costs. Key fea­tures of the ver­sion:

• For high vol­ume drone man­u­fac­tur­ers
• For super­dense inte­gra­tions
• Schemes / Lay­out / CAD
• Chang­ing the scheme and lay­out accord­ing to cus­tomer require­ments
• Pro­duc­tion in our own fac­to­ry
• You con­trol the vol­ume of pro­duc­tion
• Engi­neer­ing sup­port from Sky-Drones

Equipment

Smar­tAP AIR­Link includes every­thing you need to set up and pre­pare your sys­tem for flight. The stan­dard kit will include:

1. AIR­Link Cor­po­rate Block
2. FPV cam­era with CSI cable
3. Wi-Fi anten­na with MMCX con­nec­tor
4. 2 × LTE anten­nas with MMCX con­nec­tor
5. HDMI cable ⟷ mini HDMI
6. Cable kit (7 cables for all con­nec­tors)
7. JST-GH key for Eth­er­net RJ45

Price and availability

Sky-Drone AIR­Link is already avail­able for pur­chase through the devel­op­er’s offi­cial resources at the fol­low­ing prices:

1. AIR Link Core — $2,790
2. AIR­Link Enter­prise — $2,990
3. AIR­Link Ref­er­ence Design — to clar­i­fy the price, con­tact the devel­op­er through this con­tact form

FAQ

Q. When will AIR­Link be avail­able for pur­chase?
A. Already avail­able! You can order AIR­Link by vis­it­ing the offi­cial web­site of the devel­op­er. You can pay for your order via Pay­pal or bank trans­fer. If you need any spe­cial doc­u­ments for your order, please let the devel­op­er know. Order pro­cess­ing and deliv­ery time is 1–2 days. Orders are shipped world­wide.

Q. Where can I find detailed spec­i­fi­ca­tions for AIR­Link?
A. They are all avail­able on the offi­cial Sky-Drones web­site under AIR­Link. There is also online doc­u­men­ta­tion that pro­vides more infor­ma­tion about AIR­Link.

Q. Where can I find instal­la­tion and set­up for AIR­Link?
A. The online doc­u­men­ta­tion avail­able at http://docs.sky-drones.com is the offi­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion por­tal that con­tains all the detailed infor­ma­tion on each Sky-Drones hard­ware and soft­ware prod­uct.

Q. Does AIR­Link sup­port pay­load con­nec­tion? How can I con­nect my pay­loads to AIR­Link?
A. AIR­Link has 2 cam­era ports: 1 x CSI and 1 x HDMI. We include a CSI cam­era with every AIR­Link kit along with an HDMI ⟷ mini HDMI cable for quick con­nec­tion of your cam­era pay­load. USB cam­eras or IP cam­eras can also be con­nect­ed, for this you need to con­tact the devel­op­er and he will tell you how to do this.

Q. Does AIR­Link reach the con­sumer as open source?
A. AIR­Link uses wide­ly accept­ed drone indus­try stan­dards and if you want to change the soft­ware it’s doable. The hard­ware comes with­out the abil­i­ty to access the source code, but for large man­u­fac­tur­ers, the devel­op­er can still pro­vide a ref­er­ence design and help you set up your own pro­duc­tion.

Q. Can I run my own soft­ware on AIR­Link?
Oh yeah! The devel­op­er can give you full access to the AI ​​com­put­er for auto­mat­ed mis­sions and autopi­lot so you can deploy your own appli­ca­tions through AIR­Link. To do this, you need to con­tact the devel­op­er through this con­tact form.

Q. Is AIR­Link pow­er­ful enough to run AI and machine learn­ing algo­rithms?
Oh. More than! AIR­Link is equipped with the pro­cess­ing pow­er to run com­plex algo­rithms on board. In this regard, you have noth­ing to wor­ry about.

Q. How can I con­nect AIR­Link to my com­put­er?
A. AIR­Link has built-in Wi-Fi and LTE con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Wi-Fi can be used as a hotspot to con­nect AIR­Link to your router, and LTE con­nec­tiv­i­ty means AIR­Link comes to you with inter­net already con­nect­ed. All you need to do is set up or log into your Sky-Drones Cloud account and turn on your data plan. Alter­na­tive­ly, you can also use your own car­ri­er and data plan to man­age it your­self lat­er on. Final­ly, AIR­Link has an Eth­er­net port for inte­grat­ing data links over IP. Con­tact the devel­op­er to find out more!

Q. What is your pro­duc­tion capa­bil­i­ty?
A. AIR­Link is eas­i­ly pro­duced in the hun­dreds per month. If nec­es­sary, we can pro­duce thou­sands per month with pri­or noti­fi­ca­tion of the need. AIR­Link is man­u­fac­tured in the UK using qual­i­ty assured orig­i­nal mate­ri­als. All devices are test­ed before being sent to cus­tomers.

Video

Video provided by the developer

Webi­nar on the launch of three rev­o­lu­tion­ary drone prod­ucts.

From time to time in every indus­try there are such moments when rev­o­lu­tion­ary prod­ucts and solu­tions appear. And that changes every­thing. The drone indus­try is no excep­tion. April 14, 2021 will be one of those moments. Our fel­low cus­tomers, part­ners, users and every­one who is pas­sion­ate about drones will be able to feel part of the begin­ning of a new era.