In-Flight Data and senseFly partnering on Canada's largest BVLOS UAS Operations trial to date

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In-Flight Data has announced that starting this week, it is embarking on Canada's largest BVLOS UAS Operations trial to date.

With support from senseFly, this project will seek to “demonstrate that BVLOS UAS flights can be conducted safely and efficiently, to the benefit of all Canadians, while providing cost reductions and/or operational efficiencies for the different use-cases involved.”

“We are truly excited to get the go ahead for this ambitious project,” says Chris Healy, the owner of In-Flight Data.

“Working closely with senseFly and our 20 partner organizations, we’ll be collecting a huge amount of geo-accurate data—across many types of long-range drone applications—which we are confident will help contribute to the creation of pragmatic future BVLOS legislation.”

During the trial, which is expected to run until early November, In-Flight Data will look to complete one BVLOS mission per week. The missions, which are defined by the trial’s 20 partner organizations, will cover a wide variety of operations, including pipeline surveys, graveyard inventory assessments, and search and rescue applications.

“The reasons we made this trial so large are two-fold,” Healy explains. “The more data, the better the risk models Transport Canada can create, which will help them to create safety-focused BVLOS regulations that benefit everyone. And secondly, there are just so many potential BVLOS applications out there, we really wanted to explore a good number of these.”

The flight safety data collected during the trial will be provided to Unmanned Systems Canada and Transport Canada (TC) to “help define BVLOS risk models for different categories of unmanned aircraft,” which will ultimately contribute to the growth of Canada’s commercial UAS industry, according to senseFly’s Regulatory Project Manager, Samuel Dépraz.

“The vast amount of flight safety data and learnings that Chris' team will collect and share will be extremely beneficial to the future growth of Canada’s commercial drone industry, and I’m sure other regulators around the world will be following this project with interest,” Dépraz says.

“With In-Flight Data's extensive operational experience, the project’s diverse, committed partners, and its ‘Compliant’ senseFly drones, I’ve no doubt this trial will be a success.”

Some of the key trial statistics for this project include 14 different test sites, flights up to 10 kilometers in length, and more than 1,500 kilometers total linear flight distance.

Additionally, two UAS—the senseFly eBee Plus & senseFly eBee—will be used to perform the flights. The UAS used during this trial are “designated 'Compliant' systems by TC, fall within Canada’s TC’s proposed 'Very Small' (sub-1kg) and 'Complex operations (urban)' commercial drone categories respectively.”

The UAS will be controlled using senseFly’s commercial-grade eMotion ground station software, which includes integrated air traffic and geoawareness data, which is important to running safe BVLOS operations in non-controlled airspaces.

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