WaiV Robotics, a maritime drone infrastructure startup, has raised £5.5 million in grwoth funding. The platform enables VTOL drones to take off and land from vessels as small as 10 meters without requiring modifications to the aircraft.
Operating drones at sea is limited by unstable landing surfaces, where vessel decks move across six degrees of freedom and conditions such as salt spray reduce traction. Existing solutions have largely been restricted to calm waters or controlled environments, leaving smaller vessel operators unable to deploy drones reliably.
Designed to address this, the system uses a gyro-stabilised landing pad combined with predictive algorithms to guide drones during landing. Control is managed through the remote system, reducing the need for expert pilots, while a catch-lock-release mechanism secures the aircraft on touchdown to prevent movement in rough conditions.
Compatibility extends across multiple VTOL UAV types, including multicopter, fixed-wing, and helicopter platforms. The current system supports drones up to 15 kilograms, with plans to expand to smaller and larger aircraft, targeting offshore fleets that have faced constraints in deploying drones at sea.
For drones to become a reliable part of offshore operations, the missing piece isn’t the aircraft, it’s the infrastructure around it Our system was designed to remove traditional deployment constraints, allowing fleets to operate as mobile launch and recovery hubs that ensure reliable UAV operations Without a dependable way to launch and recover at sea, large-scale deployment simply doesn’t work Our goal is to remove that constraint and make drone operations viable from virtually any vessel.
