“This year, if I’m not mistaken, we have made a thousand flights” says Moritz Moroder, co-founder of FlyingBasket, one of the very few Italian and European companies (if not the only one) that provides “heavy” transport services via drone.
It is with this summary data that the degree of maturity of a complex sector that is forced to combine the development of means with highly regulated operations can be measured.
In 2015, Moritz and his brother Matthias looked perplexed at the helicopters that supplied the refuges in the Dolomites with food and equipment. Now their company located in Bolzano takes care of it, on the other hand eliminating CO2 emissions.
“We were born as a startup in 2015, we received a round of financing and in 2020 we started with the first deliveries. Initially there was no’it was only a technological problem, but also a regulatory one. We have collaborated with the’ENAC and then with the European Aviation Safety Agency EASA; after many tests with temporary permits, starting from the beginning of 2021 and with the introduction of the new regulation we have literally taken off “.
Deliveries by drone call to mind Amazon’s trials. It was precisely the founder of this company, Jeff Bezos, who in 2013, during the broadcast 60 Minutes, he revealed the first prototypes capable of carrying the classic yellow boxes. Since then it hasn’t materialized very much, but in the professional and business sphere something is moving. And what is being moved today are 5G antenna components, electricity poles, equipment and materials of all kinds up to a maximum weight of 100 kg. The take-off areas are usually rural or outside the cities, but the landing areas are located in inaccessible areas, in the high mountains, on the roofs of tall buildings and therefore in hardly accessible points.
“In truth the ‘specific’ category of the European Regulation it does not set weight or distance limits but indicates a system of safety rules and procedures to be respected as well as risk assessment. In relation to these indications, for now we limit ourselves to 100 kg and 6 km of range, but technically the drone could do better and tomorrow even more “, Moroder emphasizes.
Not only. Already at this moment, at high altitudes, a helicopter could exhibit lift problems due to the thin air. FlyingBasket’s drone can fly three thousand meters simply increasing the number of revolutions of the rotors. Cold is also not a problem.
This result was made possible by designing and developing FB3, an aircraft aluminum drone equipped with 8 electric rotors. “We have designed some of the components in-house, such as propulsion, power supply, flight control and communication; others we have found on the market; still others we have made them according to our specifications”, he adds. the young CEO of the Bolzano startup.
The essence is that the FB3 model weighs 70 kg, it has a footprint of about 2.5 meters and, depending on the load, has an autonomy of between 10 and 40 minutes. The price is difficult to quantify because FlyingBasket does not sell drones but a service. “But I don’t rule out that one day it can be done and indicatively I would say that a transport drone would cost the same as a’electric car“suggests Moroder.
FlyingBasket offers a turnkey service that also includes the piloting of the drone and BVLOS operation, or Beyond Visual Line of Sight – beyond the pilot’s point of view. Most of the customers, concentrated in Northern Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, require targeted interventions that until yesterday could only be carried out with helicopters or cranes. Think of Cablex, the Swisscom subsidiary that deals with network infrastructures, Telecom Austria and recently also Enel. The latter is having difficulties in Latin America where the maintenance and development of the electricity grid requires the placement of components in unreachable places. Today it takes place by helicopter or by hand transport, tomorrow probably with drones.
The FlyingBasket team usually goes to the operational places, carries out the transport activity, put the drone back on the van and return to base. As happened a few weeks ago in Turin with the experimentation by Poste Italiane and Leonardo of the first deliveries between distribution centers, a taste of new second mile logistics.
According to FlyingBasket competition in its business is almost non-existent because helicopters and cranes have very different costs and are suitable for uses that justify the disbursements and logistical organization. On the other hand, drone specialists in most cases either do not have a suitable aircraft or do not have all permits and authorizations for transport.
“If I think about the future, I imagine technological solutions based on improve safety and efficiency to bring us closer to city centers. We will soon be able to increase automation integrating artificial intelligence, increasing the autonomy and also the load capacity “, concludes Moroder.
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