Business Drones

Innovadrone Heavy Hybrid

The Innovadrone company designs, develops and manufactures professional drones in France. The current range includes three series of models:

The Surveyor drone is equipped with Ethernet, Serial, PPM/Sbus interconnections and stabilized power supplies for a payload of 3.5 kg. It is French DGAC S1, S2, S3 approved, weighs 8kg, and has a flight time of 68 minutes.
It is available from 15,000 excl. VAT

The HEAVY 25kg drone has an autonomy of more than 64 minutes of flight time (empty) for a payload of up to 10 kg. There is a 40KG version made for specific uses or for export. It can carry a LIDAR scanner, a winch with smart hook developed by Innovadrone for transporting goods, doing agricultural spreading, having a 4K/HD/Zoomx30 surveillance camera...
It is available from 25,000 excl. VAT

The HEAVY HYBRID drone has an autonomy of more than 4 hours of flight time (empty) for a payload of up to 5 kg. It can thus carry several types of payloads or sensors such as the Heavy 25kg.
It is available from 35,000 excl. VAT

Dev Singh, senior director with Qualcomm RB5 5G

In August 2021, Qualcomm announces a new platform for everyone to design Qualcomm RB5 5G smart drones.
The American firm launched into the drone sector in 2015 with its Qualcomm Flight program, in partnership with NASA for the development of the Mars Ingenuity helicopter, then in 2018 with Qualcomm Flight Pro and now with the presentation of the Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G platform.
Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G platform is a solution for the development of drones with improved autonomy and intelligence features. Developers can customize their own builds through a kit. This kit includes a body, rotors, and other materials that allow users to create a drone right out of the box. Powered by the company's QRB5165 processor, it supports "on-device machine learning, computer vision, robust security, multimedia, Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity capabilities." The camera is equipped with Qualcomm's Spectra 480 ISP for 8K video, 4K HDR video, and 200MP photos. It is also equipped with Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS) for smoother footage. Digital zoom is included, although Qualcomm did not specify specific measurements. A competition with 7 cameras allows fully autonomous flights. 5G and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity supports better transmission and more reliable BVLOS flights.

the Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G platform will be offered from $ 4,000, without 5G modem (July 2021).

Drone Parrot Anafi USA

At the end of June 2020, Parrot announced the professional drone, the Parrot Anafi USA. This drone, developed in partnership with the American army, is intended for professionals and in particular law enforcement. With a reduced size and a weight of 500g, the Anafi USA is equipped with two 1/2.4" CMOS sensors and EO 4K HDR wide angle, a 32x zoom telephoto lens and a FLIR Boson thermal camera.
It is certified IP53 weather resistance, withstands winds of 53km/h and has an autonomy of 32 minutes.
This drone was designed for the United States military and manufactured in the USA (Massachusetts factory). Unlike DJI, the data is encrypted using the 512-bit AES standard and has a WPA2 identification key. Flight data is not recorded on the drone, but on European Parrot servers only after the user's consent. This avoids providing any sensitive data in the event of a drone crash or theft. Parrot wants to stand out from DJI vis-à-vis American and European users.
In order to be able to fly everywhere, the NFZs (no fly zone) are not installed on the drone from the outset, which will avoid untimely blockages.

Anafi USA is proposed at a price of $ 7,000 (July 2020).

In May 2020, DJI presented an Enterprise Matrice 300 RTK drone. This drone has an autonomy of 55 minutes when it is empty, the batteries can be changed "at hot", that's means without switching off the drone between two battery changes. It has OcuSync 2.0 video return in 1080p up to 15km in FCC standard, 8km in CE standard, it is IP45 certified against water and dust projections, withstands rain of 100m/24h. It can carry up to 2.7kg of payload. It is equipped with conventional cameras but also with cameras operating on the principle of flight time. This is possible on the 6 sides of the drone and up to 40m.
It also has a double battery which protects the drone against any failure of one of them, it can fly with only 3 propellers in case of engine failure, a wide angle FPV camera in the event of loss of the video signal from the carried cameras, an ADS-B receiver allowing to know the state of air traffic (planes and helicopters) within a radius of 20km.

It is compatible with theH20, H20T, Z30, XT2 and XT S cameras. The H20 and H20T cameras were presented at the same time as the Matrix 300. They each have a first 20 MP sensor with a zoom equivalent to 31.7-556.2mm and a night mode, a second 12Mpx sensor with an equivalent focal length of 24mm and a laser rangefinder with a wavelength of 905nm capable of providing the distance at which there is an object up to 1200m away.
The H20T camera also has a radiometric thermal sensor of 640x512px at 30fps.

Drone DJI Mavic Pro Enterprise equipped with speakers

Several countries used drones during the COVID-19 health crisis to control individuals' body temperatures or to enforce containment guidelines.
China has used drones that take the temperature of people from a distance, In Madrid, Spain has chosen drones from the company GDU SAGA. These drones, close in size and shape to DJI's Mavic Pro are light industrial drones with military quality, specialized in the fields of public security, forest fire prevention, oil, electricity, traffic and maritime patrol.
In France these are DJI Mavic Pro drones with speakers that have been chosen and that encourage passers-by to return home and stay there, they are in action in several French cities such as Nice, on the island of Ré, Cotes d'Amor, in Lorraine, soon in Paris and Valence.

video on DHL line

In May 2019, DHL Express and the world’s leading intelligent autonomous aerial vehicle company, EHang, have entered into a strategic partnership to jointly launch at Guangzhou a fully automated and intelligent smart drone delivery solution to tackle the last-mile delivery challenges in the urban areas of China.

The new customized route, which has been exclusively created for a DHL customer, covers a distance of approximately eight kilometers between the customer premises and the DHL service center in Liaobu, Dongguan, Guangdong Province.

The EHang Falcon smart drone, with eight propellers on four arms, is designed with multiple redundant systems for full backup, and smart and secure flight control modules. The drones, which can carry up to 5kg of cargo per flight, take off and land atop intelligent cabinets that were specifically developed for the fully autonomous loading and offloading of the shipment.

Source UASmagazine

Vahana Alpha One of Airbus

EHang 184

The Vahana Alpha One prototype from Airbus continues its unmanned tests. It has tilting rotors that allow the aircraft to go from a vertical takeoff to a horizontal flight.

Chinese company EHang unveiled its vertical landing and take-off vehicle in January 2016 at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show. Able to fly at 100 km / h for 25 minutes, the device EHang 184 takes a person. Since its launch, it has achieved many flights with pilot and seems to have been tested in Dubai in 2018.
EHang opened an R & D center in Lyon.

The Google Wing Project is a project originally developed by Google X in 2012 with the help of Nicholas Roy robotic teacher at MIT. Google X is the laboratory of Google working only on sensitive and "secret" business projects.
The Wing project is a drone capable of flying vertically but also perfectly horizontally and delivering packages very precisely door to door, unlike the DHL drone which delivers it only to a package relay. It has a sophisticated on-board navigation system that allows it to find its own way in its environment. Instead of landing to deliver packages, Google’s Wing Project uses a cable to deliver packages smoothly when it reaches its destination, the package may have a payload of up to 2.3 kg delivered, the cable retracts and the drone starts again.
Full-scale tests have been carried out in Australia, the system was to be marketed in 2017 but seems to be suspended?

The Amazon Air Prime drone was designed with NASA and the Single European Sky ATM. It must fly at low altitude less than 400 feet and 100 mph and be able to transport packages weighing up to 5 lb.
Amazon has patented a beehive-like structure to house delivery drones in cities, allowing Amazon to leave large single-story warehouses that temporarily store packages before they are shipped. On December 7, 2016, Amazon successfully delivered a Prime Air package to Cambridge, England. Amazon had built, for this test, a Prime Air distribution center in the Cambridge area.

The United States of America launched a test program in 2017 to expand the use of UAVs for domestic and commercial purposes. Small gears can be deployed in many sectors such as trade, agriculture and rescue services.
This program will therefore make it possible to deliver medicines and packages, to inspect inaccessible infrastructures or to provide rapid assistance in emergency operations.
Night flights or overflight of populated areas could be allowed. This is for the White House a manner to minimize rules to catch the future potential UAV market.

Automated station for the UAV DPD Group

DPDgroup, an entity of the La Poste group, has delivered parcels with a UAV to technology incubators since December 19, 2016 on the site of the Center for Studies and Tests for Autonomous Models (CEEMA) in the VAR.
This first commercial line of about fifteen kilometers is the result of two years of experiments and more than 700 hours of flight operated since June 2014 with the company Atechsys, specialized in civilian professional UAVs, which itself sits on this nursery.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) has authorized this commissioning. Based from the Pickup relay of the Post Office in Saint-Maximin, the connection is based on two terminals, at the departure and the arrival, to secure the loading and unloading of the packets. The route of the device is fully programmed with the GPS data and its route monitored by an operator approved by the DGAC.
The UAV can carry Chronopost packages up to three kilos.

The development of the commercial UAVs industry is expected to accelerate in the years to come. According to Tractica data, global revenues generated by commercial UAVs will even exceed 12 billion in 2025. In Europe, revenues of around 3 billion are expected.

Forecast of commercial UAVs revenues from 2016 to 2015 worldwide

Forecast of UAVs revenues from 2016 to 2015 in France