Three Israeli drone companies teamed up to deliver a three-day showcase of a holistic autonomous security solution.
High Lander Aviation, Sentrycs and Cando Drones delivered the showcase at Caesarea Business Park to invited guests including representatives from multiple city municipalities, police forces and security heads, and a number of embassy delegations.
The system, operating on High Lander’s Orion drone fleet management platform, executed rapid response protocols against simulated threats. For ground-based incidents, drones were dispatched from autonomous charging stations and flew to incident scenes at pre-determined altitudes while sharing
both telemetry data and live video feeds with the facility’s command center, before returning for precision landings at their charging stations. Air incursions were met with integrated counter-drone measures that detected the non-cooperative drones and the location of their controllers before usurping control and landing the aircraft safely for investigation.
Further capabilities of the Orion operating system were also demonstrated, including live feed sharing via a temporary link, AI-powered object detection and tracking, full control of drone payloads from the command center dashboard and manual control of the drones themselves, multiple simultaneous flights, and hot replacement of low-battery drones. All operations, video feeds and relevant data was displayed on a real-time map at the command center.
The missions were conducted autonomously, and as the operators remained inside the command center, beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). Caesarea Business Park was granted unique permission to operate autonomous and BVLOS flights by the CAAI, a first in that country. This decision was made by the aviation authority because of Orion’s dedicated safety features such as its GPS loss protection, terrain recognition, and collision avoidance algorithms.
“I am extremely proud of this event. Our goal was both to demonstrate state of the art security technology, and also to provide a forum connecting key players of the Israeli drone ecosystem with city municipalities, public safety organizations and state security services. We achieved all this, and more,”
said Alon Abelson, CEO of High Lander. “Israel is known as the forefront of the evolution of aviation worldwide thanks to a thriving tech sector and the forward-thinking policies of the Israel Innovation Authority and the CAAI.
Events like these are a great way of demonstrating to the domestic and international audiences the real-world applications of drone technology.”
The counter-drone features of the system were provided by Sentrycs, a global leader in integrated counter-drone technology and partner to High Lander.
Sentrycs’ DTI and mitigation modules detect drone activity, extract user-level identification from drones, and mitigated uncooperative drones by disconnecting them from their remote controls and assuming direct control in order to land them safely.
Meir Avidan, Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at Sentrycs, said: “Sentrycs is a company that provides a safe solution for identifying, verifying, tracking and taking control of unauthorized drones by using advanced and safe technology, and in cooperation with other companies creates safe skies from hostile drones.”
The showcase drew both domestic and international attention because of the recent heightened demand for security drones throughout Israel and because of the potential applications of the system in public security, smart city infrastructure, border control, and first response for all branches of the emergency services.
“The Cando Drones Group is proud to be a significant part of the technological hub that opened in Caesarea and will open in many other cities in Israel in the near future,” said Alon Kloss, COO and founder of Cando Drones. “Smart command centers are an important pillar in any smart urban infrastructure. Drones are able to provide timely, reliable and accurate information, while their quickness of response and versatility enable decision makers and operational teams to benefit from complete situational awareness in real time.”
The showcase was held at Caesarea Business Park, a facility which houses more than 200 high-tech firms. The site boasts a cutting-edge command center and integrated security systems, including Orion-powered drones, which are so effective that companies there actually enjoy a reduction in their insurance premiums.
“Maintaining security, today more than ever, is one of the cornerstones of our concept,” said Michael Charsanti, CEO of the Caesarea Development Company. “Autonomous drones are a central pillar of the Caesarea Development Corps, providing a solution which is not only efficient, but also economical; the identification and immediately removal of threats, and prompt detection of infrastructure issues, bring significant cost savings over time that more than offset the cost of the system.”
“Caesarea Live Display 2024” was one in a series of exciting drone-based events in Israel, including UVID Dronetech in Tel Aviv in February, and the ongoing Israel National Drone Initiative, a drone technology sandbox that consistently produces exciting innovations with far-reaching applications.
About High Lander
High Lander was established in 2018 by aviation veterans and technology experts with a dream: a fully integrated sky where crewed and uncrewed aircraft operate in harmony. The company is achieving this with two scalable, software-only solutions. The first is Orion DFM, a platform for creating, managing and automating drone missions for any application, including public safety, deliveries, security and precision agriculture. The second is Vega UTM, a next-generation uncrewed traffic management platform that
oversees aerial activity over any airspace, supplying the infrastructure authorities need to enable integrated aviation.