Our History
- 2014, the well well-reputed former air force pilot Urban Wahlberg founded Drone Center Sweden and the UAS Testbed at Västervik Airport, as well as the UAS Forum Sweden conference.
- 2021 Västervik was designated National Drone Centre by the Swedish Transport Agency and got one of Europe’s largest civil UAS geo-zons. Building on over a decade of experience, the foundation for Västervik Drone Science Park was laid.
- 2024 Västervik Drone Science Park (VDSP) was formed by the local foundation partly owned by the Västervik Municipality and the local business community, naturally incorporating the previous drone activities as its foundation. Urban Wahlberg continue within VDSP as Senior advisor Aero/UAS and Airport Manager.
The reorganizations aim is to long term secure continued development, broaden and scale up of operations with the goal of contributing even more to strengthening R/D, innovation and the UXV drone industry at large.
Västervik Drone Science Park (VDSP)
Västervik Drone Science Park (VDSP) is Sweden's national drone centre, designated by the Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen). We are a neutral, foundation-owned, business-driven non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating innovation within unmanned systems (UxS) and advanced sensor technologies across air, land, and maritime domains.
As a neutral innovation intermediary, VDSP connects industry, academia, public authorities, defence stakeholders, and civil society to transform ideas into practical solutions and sustainable business opportunities. Working in close collaboration within triple-helix and quadruple-helix partnerships, we support innovation from early concepts to real-world implementation.
We strive for a bright future where UXV drones is of help to mankind within all possible different applications and areas. Probably within areas we do not yet have explored and thought of.
We have an entrepreneurial approach with long experience of the process from invention/innovation to business case and market. We use all our tools in the “Tool box” and if we miss a tool, we find it or create it.
VDSP is also an active member of the Swedish innovation ecosystem through SISP (Swedish Incubators & Science Parks) and the organizer of UAS Forum Sweden, established in 2015 and recognized as Sweden's leading national forum for the drone and unmanned systems community.
Science Park & Testbed
A unique strength of VDSP is the combination of a science park focused on innovation, business development, and dual-use technologies, together with a national and international test and demonstration environment where new solutions can be validated and demonstrated in realistic operational scenarios. By combining theory, innovation, and practical testing, we help our partners move faster from concept to deployment.
Our basic overall model for operations is:
Connect
People, organizations, market and unmanned technologies.
Facilitate
Collaborative innovation, testing and demonstrations, and new business opportunities.
Accelerate
The future within unmanned technologies and applications through the first two point!
Collaboration is our second name!
We work very close to others and always strive to find the best competency for a certain task, nationally or internationally. Sometimes its within academia, sometimes in a company, sometimes in a single person with unique knowledge or competence.
Academia has an important role and foremost the local Campus Västerviks that offers the possibility to research and education in different forms in collaboration with other universities e.g. Linköping university, Linnaeus university et al. Also other science parks and incubators to find early stages innovations related to unmanned technologies e.g. Kalmar Science Park, Linköpings Sciencs Park and others.
We are a member of Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences Business Council and other relevant contexts to widen our insights and network.
We work close to the industry within all sectors since UXV cover most industries in one way or another e.g. drone developers/manufacturers, additive manufacturing, manufacturing at large, agriculture, logistics, electronics, sensors