Project description
A pioneering new drone suitable for complex business applications enters the market
In between sophisticated and very expensive military drones and simple ones available at toy stores are a growing class of drones for commercial use. Their applications include the collection of precision data for mapping out leaf coverage or inspecting infrastructure, and carrying out search and rescue missions in inaccessible areas, in difficult conditions and potentially with large payloads. The Swiss SME Wingtra, selling vertical take-off and landing mapping drones globally since 2017, has added a new product to its growing portfolio to cover these needs and more. The EU-funded WingtraOne project is helping the team bring their pioneering fully autonomous drone by the same name to market.
Objective
Drones and footage from their cameras have become familiar sights over the past decade. Yet Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have only scratched the surface of their commercial potential. Drone technology is now evolving beyond its military roots to encompass a broad array of business applications. Goldman Sachs estimate that the commercial segment holds the most potential for growth, with a triple- digit CAGR over the next five years. They expect that by 2020 the global drone market size will grow by 42% in precision agriculture and 36% in inspection and monitoring of infrastructures.
WingtraOne is our revolutionary fully autonomous hybrid drone. It takes off automatically vertically, and is therefore runway independent meaning it can be flown anywhere to map unreachable areas. After take-off it transitions into flying “like a plane”, capable of covering a far superior range than other multirotor drones even in technically difficult high winds. Nevertheless, for drones to have real application they require payload capacity. WingtraOne’s, superior payload weight permits it to carry the best in class cameras and Post-Processed Kinematics (PPK) technology. This is revolutionary for industries such as surveying and agriculture.
We are a spin-off from the ETH Autonomous System Lab in Zürich. As a team, our mission has been to create a drone that could combine the usability of multirotors but the coverage of fixed wing with heavy payload capacity. We incorporated Wingtra and further developed our drone. We now seek non-diluting funding to exploit the commercial opportunity made possible thanks to our revolutionary drone which received very promising early signs from the market.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
6300 Zug
Switzerland
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.