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Swiss-Austrian Collaboration to Laser-Scan Alps Using Dufour Drones

A Swiss-Aus­tri­an con­sor­tium is to tri­al laser scan­ning appli­ca­tions in the Swiss Alps using Dufour Aero­space drones, reports a press release. The part­ners are RIEGL, BSF Swis­spho­to, SLF and Dufour. A series of test flights will begin this Spring and con­tin­ue on for sev­er­al months.

Dufour will sup­port the project by employ­ing its 3‑me­tre-wingspan Aero­Mi­ni and 6‑me­tre-wingspan Aero2 UAS plat­forms. RIEGL is to pro­vide the laser scan­ners and assis­tance with the inte­gra­tion; BSF Swis­spho­to will con­tribute to data val­i­da­tion and assess the com­mer­cial rel­e­vance of the tech­nol­o­gy and the process­es; While, the WSL-Insti­tute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF is to ensure the data qual­i­ty meets the nec­es­sary require­ments, by sup­port­ing the field test with expe­ri­enced per­son­nel.

The release explains, “There is grow­ing inter­est among var­i­ous pri­vate and pub­lic stake­hold­ers in high-res­o­lu­tion, up-to-date and cost-effec­tive data, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the area of alpine envi­ron­men­tal haz­ards or ener­gy pro­duc­tion.

“Present­ly, aero­planes and heli­copters are used for such pur­pos­es, but this par­tic­u­lar test series will demon­strate the effi­cien­cy of drone appli­ca­tion with a view to a low­er envi­ron­men­tal impact and sig­nif­i­cant cost reduc­tions.”

Drones have been employed for aer­i­al geo-data acqui­si­tion for some time, but are only usable for small areas. Dufour has devel­oped a plat­form suit­able for projects that before only crewed planes were used.

(Cred­it: Nature­trek)

Thomas Pfam­mat­ter, co-Founder and CEO of Dufour Aero­space, com­ment­ed, “This is a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate the capa­bil­i­ties of our Aero­Mi­ni and Aero2 ver­ti­cal take-off-and-land­ing uncrewed aer­i­al sys­tems in rel­e­vant appli­ca­tions. We’ll have a shared, clear aim of increas­ing effi­cien­cy in data gen­er­a­tion medi­um and long-term, sup­port­ed by renowned, expe­ri­enced part­ners.”

Michael May­er, MD of Richter (a RIEGL com­pa­ny), added, “This project will help us to under­stand the poten­tial of drones at a larg­er scale, cov­er­ing wide appli­ca­tion areas. As a qual­i­ty-con­scious high-end pro­duc­er of laser scan­ners, we are pre­des­tined to con­tribute our exper­tise.”

He con­tin­ued,  “While we already have a lot of expe­ri­ence with using our high-end sen­sors with UAS, this is nowa­days most­ly lim­it­ed to small­er areas using mul­ti-copter types, sin­gle-rotor drones or VTOLs of small­er scale.”

The series of tri­als are expect­ed to begin this spring in Düben­dorf, Switzer­land, with basic func­tion­al tests, but will then be extend­ed to the Alpine region dur­ing the course of 2024 and 2025, depend­ing on the results from each indi­vid­ual tri­al. 

The project is also sup­port­ed by the Fed­er­al Office for Defence, arma­su­isse, and Fon­da­tion the Ark.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.dufour.aero

www.riegl.com

www.bsf-swissphoto.com

(Top image: Dufour Aero2)

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