When Cambridge Sensoriis appears at APEX Europe this October, it will do so under a new name: skyAnchor. The rebrand marks more than a cosmetic change. It reflects a deliberate shift from being seen as a clever radar R&D house to a company selling a clear, operational solution: resilient, all‑weather autonomous takeoff and landing for UAVs.
“We don’t want to just be the clever techy guys,” Mike Hall, the co‑founder explains. “If you’re running operations and worried about your drones working, you don’t care how clever the tech is – you just need it to land, every time.”
From radar heritage to focused landing systems
The company’s roots lie in radar and RF sensing, with earlier work spanning more traditional radar projects and seeker technology. That portfolio has now been intentionally split. The original founder and former CEO has stepped out to build a new, out‑and‑out defence business focused on interceptor and seeker markets, leaving skyAnchor as a pure landing systems company with explicitly dual‑use ambitions.
At the core is a patented, collaborative positioning approach that grew out of a failed attempt to solve drone landings with traditional radar. That failure forced a rethink:
“We had a project we did terribly on,” Mike recalls. “Out of that awful experience came the idea for a collaborative system built exactly for the landing problem. It was born in that problem space, not in a lab chasing a neat sensor demo.”
The result is a precise RF‑based positioning system designed not as a general‑purpose radar, but as a dedicated landing and takeoff solution, now outperforming camera and ultra‑wideband systems in demanding environments, according to feedback from partners.
Walking the dual‑use tightrope
skyAnchor is unapologetically dual use. Defence programmes currently provide much of the pull‑through, particularly around maritime and ship‑to‑ship drone logistics, but the company is careful not to badge itself as a pure defence player. The drone market is vast, across industries as diverse as surveying and movie making.
There is a clear and wise calculation here. Branding the business as exclusively defence would complicate expansion into civil markets such as delivery drones, coast guard operations, and longer‑term opportunities in space and wider autonomy. At the same time, defence customers offer innovation appetite, budget, and a regulatory context where early‑stage autonomy can be trialled more aggressively than in civilian airspace.
The company’s stance is to build for autonomy and capability first, and let that capability serve both markets rather than designing bespoke “defence‑only” features that would limit future adoption.
Small team, big ambition
skyAnchor remains a compact team of around 10+ people, heavily weighted toward engineering and software. The culture is that of a hands‑on R&D outfit edging into scale‑up territory: test rigs hacked from quad bikes, intensive field campaigns, and a history of hard‑won reliability.
Hiring is less about narrow discipline and more about mindset. The company wants engineers comfortable stepping beyond traditional silos, working directly with customers, and exploiting modern tools to do more with small teams. The harder challenge now is not the core technology, but market awareness, sales, and integration into a fragmented UAV manufacturing ecosystem.
skyAnchor is already working with many of the best‑known UK UAV manufacturers, positioning itself as a component provider rather than a platform prime. The future will revolve around casting a wide net and convincing airframe builders that robust, autonomous landing is a differentiator rather than an afterthought.
APEX Europe: The moment to tell the new story
APEX Europe will be one of the first major outings for the skyAnchor brand, complete with new website, updated communications, and – crucially – a clearer story.
The company wants visitors to stop thinking of it as “the radar people from Cambridge” and start seeing it as a specialist in autonomous takeoff and landing: a dual‑use enabler for any operator trying to make drones work reliably, in all weather, from challenging platforms.
Internally, there’s a sense of crossing a threshold: from startup inventors to a business that has survived the brutal early trials and setbacks, hardened its product, and is now ready to scale. APEX will test whether that story resonates – with defence innovators, civil operators, and the growing number of drone manufacturers who now need their aircraft to not just fly, but land perfectly, every time.
Find skyAnchor on stand SB24 at Apex Europe 7-8 October 2026
