Dronitaly: “Italy Takes Leading Drone Role as Three Day Convention Nears Completion” 

Droni­taly, a three day drone-relat­ed con­ven­tion locat­ed in Bologna and organ­ised by Bolog­naFiere Water&Energy (BFWE), is near­ing com­ple­tion (Octo­ber 9th-11th), reports a press release. 

Found­ed in 2014, the event has estab­lished itself as the lead­ing nation­al ‘com­ing togeth­er’ for peo­ple using civ­il drones for pro­fes­sion­al pur­pose along­side the gen­er­al inte­gra­tion of autonomous­ly oper­at­ed craft.

The organ­is­er states, “We are in the midst of a rev­o­lu­tion that is being backed by major inter­na­tion­al invest­ments in a mar­ket that is pre­dict­ed to reach USD23 bil­lion dol­lars by 2028. This devel­op­ment will rede­fine our urban envi­ron­ments, involv­ing archi­tects, urban plan­ners, econ­o­mists, entre­pre­neurs and thinkers from around the world.”

For 2024, Gian­car­lo Zema, Pres­i­dent of the cel­e­brat­ed Gian­car­lo Zema Design Group (eg. design­er for EHang ver­ti­ports), played a guest role offer­ing a futur­is­tic-look to the BFWE Con­ven­tion­HUB, a spe­cial area ded­i­cat­ed to con­fer­ences, meet­ings and exchanges of ideas among inter­na­tion­al pro­fes­sion­als.

The organ­i­sa­tion MADE has played an influ­en­tial role in recent con­ven­tions. It explained to the atten­dees, “From today to 2026, we still have 9 mil­lion euros in fund­ing (out of the 350 mil­lion euros allo­cat­ed by the Gov­ern­ment) avail­able from Novem­ber, to be trans­ferred to com­pa­nies that under­take dig­i­tal inno­va­tion, where 77 per­cent require to invest in research and devel­op­ment.”

This has come about due to the country’s PNRR (Nation­al Recov­ery and Resilience Plan), set up dur­ing the Covid lock­down with ini­tial gen­er­al fund­ing of EUR500 mil­lion. MADE’s role has been to man­age the finances allo­cat­ed for dig­i­tal inno­va­tion.

Fil­ip­po Boschi, Head of Inno­va­tion, Indus­tri­al Research and Exper­i­men­tal Devel­op­ment Projects, told the audi­ence that MADE has acti­vat­ed more than 250 inno­va­tion projects between 2020 and 2024, from var­i­ous man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies (69 per­cent of which involved SMEs), where most of these projects were focused on sim­u­la­tion and dig­i­tal twin (12 per­cent), AI (9 per­cent), and pro­duc­tion process opti­mi­sa­tion. MADE expects to acti­vate a fur­ther 75 inno­va­tion projects, mean­ing that com­pa­nies in the drone sec­tor could also ben­e­fit.  This fund­ing ends in 2026.

To date, com­pa­nies in the drone sec­tor have received lit­tle pub­lic fund­ing. As Pao­la Oli­vares, Direc­tor of the Drone and Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Obser­va­to­ry at Politec­ni­co di Milano, point­ed out, “77 per­cent of Ital­ian com­pa­nies in the sec­tor invest in R&D. How­ev­er, most of the drone com­pa­nies sur­veyed by the Obser­va­to­ry have relied on inter­nal resources, with only 16 per­cent util­is­ing pub­lic funds.” 

Oli­vares con­clud­ed, “Italy’s com­mit­ment is strong. Analysing a sam­ple of about 80 EU calls for UAS tech­nol­o­gy, the coun­try attracts 11 per­cent of the calls, sec­ond only to Spain, which holds 23 per­cent.”

Appli­ca­tion fields are many, with lead­ing play­ers join­ing forces to work on new projects. One exam­ple is Poste Ital­iane and major aero­space com­pa­ny, Leonar­do (the event spon­sor), who pre­sent­ed the ‘Minor Islands Pilot Ser­vice’ project. This began tri­alling dur­ing the sum­mer, with the goal of estab­lish­ing a dai­ly car­go trans­port sys­tem using drones capa­ble of car­ry­ing loads of up to 40 kilo­grams. 

The ini­tia­tive is part of the research and inno­va­tion pro­gram of the Nation­al Cen­tre for Sus­tain­able Mobil­i­ty (MOST). Pro­mot­ed by the part­ners, it is fund­ed by the Min­istry of Uni­ver­si­ty and Research (MUR) with PNRR funds. The ongo­ing exper­i­ment involves the use of car­go drones remote­ly pilot­ed by Fly­ing­Bas­ket, which take off from Bag­no­li and land with their car­go on the island of Pro­ci­da.

Leonar­do has also cre­at­ed a Drone Con­test, sched­uled for today (Octo­ber 11th) with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of sev­en uni­ver­si­ties. Now in its fifth year, the con­test is designed to pro­mote inno­va­tion in AI applied to unmanned sys­tems. The pri­ma­ry goal is to fos­ter the cre­ation of an inno­va­tion ecosys­tem, bring­ing togeth­er large com­pa­nies, uni­ver­si­ties, SMEs, spin-offs and start-ups. 

Droni­taly is tak­ing place along­side the ‘Fuelling Tomor­row’ exhi­bi­tion (focus­ing on fuel trans­for­ma­tion and the use of new ener­gy car­ri­ers in the trans­port and indus­tri­al sec­tors in the con­text of the eco­log­i­cal tran­si­tion); SAIE (relat­ing to the con­struc­tion sec­tor); and Asphalti­ca (ded­i­cat­ed to the road con­struc­tion sec­tor). All events involve an audi­ence poten­tial­ly inter­est­ed in the use of remote­ly pilot­ed vehi­cles for their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties. 

Mean­while, organ­is­er BFWE is a joint ven­ture found­ed in 2021 by Bolog­naFiere and Miru­mir. The release explains, “The goal is to devel­op a busi­ness project that con­tributes to the knowl­edge and shar­ing of issues relat­ed to the eco­nom­ic and social val­ue pf water, ener­gy and new tech­no­log­i­cal appli­ca­tions.” 

Dronitaly’s Plat­inum spon­sors this year include Bluen­est, EHang and eVer­tisky.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.dronitaly.it

(Images: Droni­taly)

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