Baptiste Tripard

Driving forces in the

commercial drone market

SenseFly in a few words

A Parrot company since 2012

More than 100 employees (Europe + USA)

More than 100 eBee produced each month

Research center in the US (Iowa) dedicated to AG applications

#1 in fixed-wing mapping drones (worldwide volume) in 2014

Over 30% stated usage by US Commercial Drone Flyers (USCDFs) – in terms

of FAA exemptions received for fixed-wing platforms

Our family of UAS

The professional

GIS drone

The survey-

grade mapping

drone

The precision

agriculture

drone

The professional

mapping drone

A sensor for every application

High-end RGB

12MP, raw,

shutter priority

Near-infrared

12MP, near

infrared

Red-edge

12MP, red-edge

Multispectral

4 bands

including

NIR & RE

Thermal

FLIR thermal

camera

NEW!

Standard RGB

18MP

Coming (really) soon…

Hardware & software

companies

1.

A great mix of expertise

Users &

Applications

2.

Mining / Construction

Calculating volume extraction in Chile

• One of world’s largest open pits

• 3 km across, total depth 1,000 m

• 100,000 tons per day

• Lidar data collection problematic:

– Security risk (cliff top locations)

– Blind spot due to topography

• 10 GCPs set

• 6 x 30-min eBee flights

• 3D DTM created

• Volume measured

• Repeated 4 weeks later

“Our two-man team completed each

of its mapping sessions in a single day,

compared to seven using lidar”Eric Romersa, WSdata3D co-founder

Agriculture

Range of beneficial applications

• Water and nitrogen management

• Drainage tiles analysis

• Insurance claims

• Yield predictions, index maps

• Prescription maps

GIS / conservation

Hawaii

Damage assessment following a volcano

eruption on the Big Island

Race for Water project

Flight authorizations

3. Regulations

“The integration of RPAS will be

based on the principle that all

operations will have an equivalent

level of safety in comparison to

regular, manned, aviation.”

What does it concretely mean?

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL

Equivalent level of safety

• MIT proposed a method to

compute and compare the level of

safety between manned and

unmanned aircrafts

• Ex.: Current aviation operations

impose a risk to the general public

on the order of 5x10-7 fatalities per

hour of operation

• ELS: Estimated Level of Safety (nb. of occurrences / flight hours)

• MTBF: Mean Time Before Failure (leading to an uncontrolled crash)

• Aexp: Area of exposure (depending

on aircraft size & shape)

• ρ: Population density

• PPen: Probability of penetration (depending on

vehicle energy)

Ex. Ground Impact Hazard Analysis

Setting desired level of safety allows to compute minimum MTBF for a

given aircraft, situation, etc.

How to minimize the ELS?

Golf ball Soccer Ball eBee Small UAS

Weight (g) 46 450 700 2 000

Kinetic

energy (J)150 100 60 600

- Using ultra-light UAS

How to minimize the ELS?

UAS out of working area

Low Battery

GPS loss

Strong wind conditions

Radio link loss

AUTOPILOT

SAFETYeBee ELS = 5x10-9

- Automatic management of critical situations

Interesting results (example)

<0.9kg 0.9 to 14kg 14 to 450kg

Correlation with the situation in the US

WE LIKE

- Proposition of micro-UAS class

- Pilot requirements

WE DO NOT LIKE

- Requirement for manual control of the

aircraft under the micro-UAS class

- No flights over people

WE WOULD LIKE TO SEE

- Extended Line of Sight operations

NPRMEXEMPTION PROCESS

WE LIKE

- Streamlined process

- Blanket COA

- Communication

WE DO NOT LIKE

- Pilot requirements

- Processing time

- Flight ceiling at 200 ft.

for the blanket COA

What is the impact of regulations?

Situation in France (FPDC)