Aerial robotics or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are a rapidly expanding industry with a broad range of applications and possibilities. Aeronavics has been at the forefront of this innovative and expanding technology.
Linda Bulk (General Manager/CEO) and Martin Riegel (Chairman) from Aeronavics explain the scope of the UAV industry and Aeronavics’ place within it.
Point of interest
Linda and Martin talk of a number of possibilities for aerial robotic technologies. What other possibilities do you think aerial robotics could hold for industries they haven’t mentioned in this video?
Jargon alert
Linda talks of providing full ‘turnkey solutions’. In consumer business, the term ‘turnkey’ means the provision of a full, ready to use product tailored for specific applications as opposed to components that need to be customised for each individual consumer.
Transcript
Linda Bulk
Aeronavics produces flying robots that carry equipment through the air for a variety of industries. In 2010, we started our company, called Droidworx at the time. Within a week of going online, we had the first distribution request, and that grew from there onwards. This is a really exciting technology – it really offers a lot of possibility.
Martin Riegel
The drone market is about $12 billion today, and it looks to double over the next 5 years. When we look at the drone market, there’s three primary segments of that – the military, commercial and consumer. We’re focused on the commercial area, and that makes about 25% of the market.
Linda Bulk
We target four industries within that.
Martin Riegel
We look at agriculture, utilities, film and media industry and then government services.
Linda Bulk
One of the primary industries that is taking on this technology is agriculture. It’s to have that ‘eye in the sky’ and being able to see what goes on rather than having to jump on that quad bike saves a lot of time and keeps people safe. Looking primarily at agriculture and primary industries, very conservatively, $160 million will be saved per annum just by the use of this technology.
Another application, for example, is industrial inspections. You see the mining companies and the oil and gas, power companies for infrastructure inspections – mapping and surveying, creating 3D maps of properties and building sites.
The film industry is how we started. We know that our systems have been used for producing the Twilight saga, for example.
Martin Riegel
Recently, our drones have been used in cricket matches to film the match from different angles.
Linda Bulk
MasterChef is being filmed with our equipment, the Formula 1 Monaco – the start of that was live broadcast with our equipment.
Another application that is really upcoming is the emergency services – so in the bushfires, for example, in Australia, the technology is being used. This market really requires robust and reliable technical solutions, also a lot of support. So those are the aspects that we focus on. We make really good systems, and we offer really solid support.
Now we’ve been transiting from being an airframe manufacturer to a turnkey solutions provider. We are now ready to roll out with our turnkey solutions worldwide.
Martin Riegel
In the short run, our focus is on delivering our new product range, so we’re investing heavily in tooling, we’re developing additional media and promotional collateral. We’re focused on building the back-end manufacturing and production capabilities necessary to deliver.
Linda Bulk
We’ve got a couple of advantages that really give us a really good position to be kind of top players.
Martin Riegel
So we have a large global distribution network already. We’ve already got a number of partnerships with different application vendors who provide sensors and software and other hardware.
Linda Bulk
It’s already a trusted brand people know – the Droidworx in association with Aeronavics is getting stronger and stronger.
Martin Riegel
We believe this is going to be a fantastic opportunity.
