Page 30 - Port of Hamburg Magazine 1.2020

■ DIGITAL DECADE
HHLA SEES NUMEROUS OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEPLOYING DRONES IN THE PORT OF HAMBURG
30 | Port of Hamburg Magazine | March 2020
The flying ace
Sven Howar has been the operations manager and a drone pilot at HHLA Sky right from the start. Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG’s start-up intends to establish itself in the new market for drone services.
The Gartner company, which considers itself a lead- ing global research firm, publishes an annual “hype cycle for new technologies”. In it, “autonomous fly- ing modes of transportation” were described as be- ing in the “innovation trigger” phase – meaning they are at the beginning of their technological develop- ment.
This will change rather quickly, predicts Sven How- ar, project manager, drone pilot and service manag- er at HHLA Sky. If it were up to him, the in-house start-up of Hamburg-based logistics company HH- LA would immediately start to use drones for auto- mated flight operations. Though Germany still has no experience with automated flight to speak of, this can be seen as an opportunity.
“We have no technological problems since we are dealing with mature products,” explains Howar. “The legal and organisational framework has yet to develop, though things have happened on a legisla-
tive level.” The 28-year-old knows what he’s talking about: he wrote his academic thesis at Leuphana University Lüneburg on the “possibilities and limits of drone usage for delivery processes in Germany”.
It’s currently possible to become an absolute pio- neer in a very promising market, and HHLA Sky wants to take advantage of this. No details can be revealed yet, but one thing is certain: HHLA Sky’s in-house drones are unique. Extremely robust and equipped with all available safety technology, they can in principle carry out every conceivable assign- ment.
The frequently cited express deliveries and other shipments are just a small part of the market. Drones are much more often used to quickly identi- fy impending threats to industrial areas from the air, as well as for civil protection and environmental monitoring. In the construction industry and in agri- culture, drones are used to survey ground and build-
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