Riedel and Skyroads will combine drones with gyro cameras to bring a new dimension to SailGP

The Skybot-Cam, a system that combines high payload drones with professional gyro-stabilised camera systems, is at the heart of Riedel and Skyroads’s collaboration for the SailGP racing championship.

The partnership, which took its first steps during the grand finale of the second SailGP season in San Francisco on 26 and 27 March, will be implemented exclusively at the SailGP in 2024, after which the system will be available for all types of events. Riedel will act as an integrator, using its existing communication infrastructure for the Skyroads flight surveillance system while leveraging the SailGP LiveLineFX augmented reality technology.

Achim Kostron, commercial director at Skyroads, is delighted that the company has “embarked” on this project, as he sees its Skybot-Cam system “an excellent way to implement early applications of our later aviation-type, certified self-flying-system.” SailGP itself, through its chief technology officer Warren Jones, welcomes the progress, as “today’s professional airborne broadcast camera systems are mainly helicopter based and require enormous organizational, technical, and budgetary effort for a photographic platform that, although creating high quality pictures, is unsustainable in the long run,”

Finally, Thomas Riedel, CEO and founder of Riedel, underlined that this “strategic partnership reflects our commitment and vision to enhance innovation in order to create future-oriented formats, focusing both on environmental and safety aspects at the same time.”