A drone manufacturing company for the purposes of air transport, clean electricity and agriculture services, Aerial Industries Pte. The company also holds majority shares at Heirs Airline Inc., Canada. Aerial Industries Pte. Ltd was originally conceptualised as an agro-drone unit designed by a small team of Nigerian engineering graduates and funded by the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF). The project
went on to win the 2017 Airbus Humanitarian Challenge Award leading to some funding and Airbus' internal engineering expertise in a 6-month business development support over in Hamburg Germany. That effort then led to other awards and recognitions across the globe including but not limited to: Fledge, Peru South America, Dubai Expo 2020, Slush Helsinki (2017), Hello Tomorrow, Paris (2017), Autodesk Singapore (2018), Ashinaga Foundation Japan (2019), Entrepreneur First Singapore (2019/’20) and more. A University of the West of England (UWE) spin-off company; later researched and further developed at the Singapore University of Technology & Design (SUTD), the overarching purpose of Aerial Industries Pte. Ltd. is to open up the West African skies by innovating with its US provisional patent design (OCN 49530538). The long term plan is to build a sustainable and economical air transportation ecosystem in West Africa including the development of an urban aerial mobility vehicle often referred to as "flying cars". Furthermore, Heirs Airline Inc., Canada is a city-pairing platform designed to connect African cities more efficiently within the continent and beyond with neural network-tailored lifestyle architecture specific for the unserved and underserved in the West African regions. The future of Heirs airline Inc., Canada will bolster global interactions; transactional and exploratory business opportunities for the region. A move from its most isolated state today with the advent help of social media, technologies such as CNN/ RNN is changing the continent's narrative. Today however, we are simply focused on the simple operations of dispersing supplementary soil nutrients on farm fields using drones while sustainably generating clean electricity to charge the batteries of our on-site farm equipments by deploying mobile airborne wind energy kites on the open (farm) fields of operations. You may question whether the long term vision of building flying cars and expanding the use of Africa's airspace does any good for the continent. Do we need drones in Africa? Would that solve Africa's most pressing issues? Well, the quick answers are 'no' and 'not really'. However, that misses the point, unless we care to understand the true long-term value of the plan to "Defeat Africa's Crippling and Mostly Non-Existent Air Transportation Infrastructure" using deep tech innovative application, media, and humanities we might carve a niche towards community-building and growth. With the driven down cost of aerial robotics over the past decade, most of us in the industry can speculate on where the technology sits on the Hype Cycle graph but we all know that drones are not a fad anymore rather, it's here to stay. Therefore, at Aerial Industries Pte. Singapore, we ensure to remain nimble and flexible in both tech and market for optimised adoptions that impact clusters and communities at an exponential rate in transport, electricity and agriculture services. To achieve this we must breakdown our products to provide solutions at milestones that meet immediate challenges. Selected challenges we’ve identified are as follows:
1. Human muscle workload demand in daily arable farming operations
2. Unreliable crop yield predictions due to natural and human factors
3. Low margins in smallholder, rural and remote farming structures
4. High risk insurance and bank loan sector
5. Inaccessibility and unaffordable technologies for improving farm results
Our current aerial robotic products share hardware and software tech for simplified manufacturability, maintenance, mobility and operations. This is fundamental to the principles of our designs since 2014. Hence the flight controls of our industrial drone is transferrable for use in soft-kite wind energy system. The designs ensure commonality in piece-parts for repair and maintenance purposes while accounting for simple things as 3-man crew transport with equipments to remote farms to effectively run an 8-hour shift in precision dispersal of agro-input, on-site power generation, crop data gathering and all other relevant farm activities. that help mitigate the short flight duration of our drones due to current battery technology limitations. As we work remotely and the technology matures in Fleet Distribution and Flight (/Operations) Disruption Management with our drones (and kites) -as-a-service, the platform will have tackled numerous issues that may extend into ‘smart contracting’, realtime ‘safety and airspace regulatory’ compliances, technical Flight Laws to a number of other aerial works challenges complimenting the incumbent air traffic controls in the unchartered fields of UAV integration. It, therefore, pertinent for Aerial industries to continue to allocate resources to R&D with SUTD in its IPs for both High Altitude Wing Kite (H.A.W.K.) and Inner Planetary Aerial Mobility System (IPAMS) projects. In summary, the company's milestones set for the next 3-4 years are:
1. Deploy an affordable (110kg payload) industrial drone for crop agro-input application with extended capabilities possibly in pest larviciding and fire-retardant dispersal.
2. Deploy soft-kite (12kWH) airborne wind energy generator for on-site battery recharging
3. Use the data & technology developed to propose an urban aerial mobility vehicle for point-to-point cargo delivery
4. Use that platform developed to launch an inner and inter city-pairing transport system
5. Expand the air transport system into transatlantic services with super app lifestyle mobility service
We continue to hold majority shares at Heirs Airline Inc., Canada. As its parent company, we cautiously slug away at the impossible tasks outlined. Little accomplishments only strengthens our confidence in our long term vision and pursuit in this market. We hope to cut across the core of our business with unitary solutions into a variety of ancillary services to serve our customers effectively over the coming years through both Heirs Airline Incorporated, Canada and Aerial Industries Pte. Singapore. If you've read thus far, I'd like to address one last question I suspect you may have on why a Nigerian company is headquartered in Singapore with offices in Canada and Sierra Leone. The investment structure and engineering talent pool needs are simple and strategic reasons for the current global positioning of the company. However, to run efficiently, we are cognisant of overhead costs, therefore, avoid duplicity at all costs while encouraging multi-tasking as necessary. Additionally, this position has provided a technology developed in Nigeria by engineering graduates on a global stage to compete in the global markets. We are partnering and collaborating with other experts internationally in technology, engineering, business, and product development.
