Redbird also develops innovative solutions for precision farming, including water stress,
nitrogen fertilization optimization and monitoring of experimental micro-parcels. What
methods/technologies does Redbird deploy to detect pesticides and diseases?
‘We have been working on the flavescence dorée, a bacterial vine disease with the potential to threaten vineyards. There is no cure for the moment to this disease. We use
drones and near-infrared images to detect the infected spots early, in order to treat them
quickly through spreading, before the parcel is fully infected’.
Despite the speed at which the UAV industry is developing, UAVs do still face a number
of technological challenges. How do you navigate limited flight-times of UAVs especially
when it comes to surveying network infrastructures at length?
‘Limited flight time is a challenge indeed, but we already have high-performance UAVs
that can fly up to 2 hours and map up to 100 km linear distance per flight. We can map
30-50 km per day at a very high resolution; which is already huge and quite unusual in
the sector. In April 2013, Redbird became the very first UAV operator allowed to operate
civilian UAV beyond line of sight (BLOS), in France’.
With UAV technology continually advancing, what direction do you see the industry taking over the coming years?
‘On the hardware side, I see the development of lighter UAVs (< 2kg) for the simplest missions. And for complex missions such as BLOS flights and network surveillance, I think
heavier drones will be developed (> 10 kg), with a regulatory and certification challenge.
But more important, I foresee a huge development of industry-specific, cloud-based data
analytics processes. That is precisely the field we are investing in. For the last two years,
we have been testing and developing our solutions with a large number of experimentations with early-adopter clients. Now we gain a real recognition of the quality of our
products. We are now planning to scale-up our solution and emphasize our commercial
development’.
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