Wingcopter’s long-range drones to be deployed for aerial surveying in Japan as part of new MoU

Wingcopter’s autho­rized part­ner in Japan, ITOCHU Cor­po­ra­tion, has signed a MOU to col­lab­o­rate on the prac­ti­cal use of Wingcopter’s long-range drones in aer­i­al sur­vey­ing togeth­er with PASCO Cor­po­ra­tion and Yel­lowS­can Japan Co., Ltd.

Under the part­ner­ship, Yel­lowS­can Japan’s advanced LiDAR scan­ner ‘VOYAGER’ will be used on the Wing­copter 198. By inte­grat­ing this tech­nol­o­gy with PAS­CO’s exten­sive exper­tise in oper­a­tional qual­i­ty and safe­ty in aer­i­al sur­vey­ing, it is now pos­si­ble to car­ry out long-dis­tance and large-area sur­veys that were pre­vi­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to achieve with­out manned air­craft. 

In a sin­gle 45-minute flight, the Wing­copter 198 can scan more than 1,000 hectares, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly cap­tur­ing LiDAR and RGB data, allow­ing the sys­tem to gen­er­ate an excep­tion­al­ly high point den­si­ty and pre­ci­sion. This makes it suit­able even for the most demand­ing appli­ca­tions.

Stef­fen Schubkegel, Senior Key Account Man­ag­er at Wing­copter, said: “Japan’s chal­leng­ing ter­rain and expo­sure to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters require the most reli­able and advanced sur­vey­ing tech­nolo­gies avail­able. 

“We are hon­ored to work along­side ITOCHU, PASCO, and Yel­lowS­can — all rec­og­nized lead­ers in their respec­tive fields — to com­bine our exper­tise and devel­op the best pos­si­ble aer­i­al LiDAR solu­tion for this demand­ing task.”

The col­lab­o­ra­tion also pro­motes automa­tion and labor sav­ings in sur­vey­ing tasks, there­by con­tribut­ing to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment in the sur­vey­ing indus­try and reduc­ing dis­as­ter risks.

The com­pa­nies ini­tial­ly plan to use the Wing­copter 198 in dis­as­ter man­age­ment, where drone-based sur­vey­ing is play­ing an increas­ing­ly impor­tant role, to do the fol­low­ing:

• Cre­ate haz­ard maps and mon­i­tor ground defor­ma­tion as part of effec­tive pre-dis­as­ter pre­ven­tion
• Gath­er infor­ma­tion and assess dam­age in the event of a dis­as­ter
• Mea­sure ter­rain changes and devel­op recov­ery plans dur­ing post-dis­as­ter restora­tion

Car­ry­ing out these tasks is way eas­i­er and less risky with fixed-wing drones such as the Wing­copter 198 than with tra­di­tion­al human or air­craft-based meth­ods, espe­cial­ly as about 70 per cent of Japan’s land con­sists of moun­tain­ous and hilly ter­rain, with steep slopes and short, fast-flow­ing rivers.

Con­ven­tion­al mul­ti­copter drones, on the oth­er hand, would not be suit­able for such tasks as they are lim­it­ed in range and cov­er­age com­pared to the Wing­copter 198.

Masa­haru Sato, Deputy Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Aero­space Depart­ment at ITOCHU Cor­po­ra­tion, said: “By equip­ping the Wing­copter 198 with the indus­try-lead­ing “VOYAGER” laser scan­ner, this col­lab­o­ra­tion over­comes the range and cov­er­age lim­i­ta­tions of tra­di­tion­al mul­ti-copters.

“This solu­tion is specif­i­cal­ly designed to meet Japan’s com­plex ter­rain and dis­as­ter mit­i­ga­tion require­ments. Our goal is to fos­ter inno­va­tion that auto­mates sur­vey­ing work­flows and reduces labor require­ments, ensur­ing swifter respons­es to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and min­i­miz­ing asso­ci­at­ed risks.”

Takashi Shi­naza­wa, Direc­tor & Senior Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Research & Devel­op­ment, Tech­nol­o­gy Strat­e­gy & Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty at PASCO Cor­po­ra­tion, added: “Based on PASCO’s more than 70 years of expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in aer­i­al sur­vey­ing since its found­ing, this POC encom­passed sur­vey plan­ning, oper­a­tional design, data acqui­si­tion, and eval­u­a­tion.

“Going for­ward, we will con­tin­ue to work in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with Wing­copter GmbH and ITOCHU Cor­po­ra­tion to address a wide range of soci­etal chal­lenges through the uti­liza­tion of geospa­tial infor­ma­tion.”

Shin­ji Ina­ba, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Yel­lowS­can Japan, said: “Yel­lowS­can, through its Japan­ese sub­sidiary, is pleased to announce this strate­gic part­ner­ship with Wing­copter focused on high-per­for­mance sys­tems: the Yel­lowS­can Voy­ager inte­grat­ed with the Wing­copter 198.

This unique com­bi­na­tion of a high-end LiDAR solu­tion and a long-range VTOL plat­form push­es the lim­its of drone sur­vey­ing, enabling pro­fes­sion­als to map mul­ti-hectare areas in a frac­tion of the time pre­vi­ous­ly required. Through such part­ner­ships, Yel­lowS­can con­tin­ues to sup­port pro­fes­sion­als world­wide and to dri­ve inno­va­tion fur­ther.”