Global airspace management platform AirMap and Honeywell are set to develop a new tracking solution for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) or drones.

The companies will jointly develop a cost-effective hardware device to allow for drones to maintain consistent communication with a UAS traffic management (UTM) system.

The digital air traffic management system UTM comprises technologies and services, which have the capability to maintain safe integration and separation of drones and other aircraft and objects in low-altitude airspace.

With the new drone tracking solution, AirMap and Honeywell will provide situational awareness of manned and unmanned aircraft operations to airspace safety authorities within an airspace system.

“We’ve partnered with Honeywell to deliver an easy-to-use, cost-effective and drone-agnostic device as a practical way to start managing drone traffic in any environment, today.”

AirMap chairman and co-founder Ben Marcus said: “The AirMap UTM Platform is designed to provide a real-time operating picture of the airspace for both manned and unmanned aircraft.

“We’ve partnered with Honeywell to deliver an easy-to-use, cost-effective and drone-agnostic device as a practical way to start managing drone traffic in any environment, today.”

The new drone tracking solution will support multiple communication options, including 4G and satellite in areas that lack 4G coverage, for the broadcast of real-time drone telemetry feeds to a UTM system.

The AirMap UTM Platform ingests telemetry feeds from various solutions that are hardware and software based, for visualisation, monitoring, and deconfliction by air navigation service providers (ANSP) and other relevant authorities.

As an investor in AirMap, Honeywell uses the former’s application programming interfaces (API) for industrial customers in various operations.

The drone tracker device is currently available as a proof of concept for testing.