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Start-up Involi to become a key player in Canada’s drone air traffic management

Tech

4 November 2020

Air traffic awareness systems specialist Involi has been chosen by NAV Canada to deploy its infrastructure on telecom antennas and towers to create air corridors for the development of drone flights. Involi was chosen by NAV Canada, the Swiss equivalent of Skyguide, to test the integration of commercial UAVs into air traffic. The start-up will […]

Air traffic awareness systems specialist Involi has been chosen by NAV Canada to deploy its infrastructure on telecom antennas and towers to create air corridors for the development of drone flights.

Involi was chosen by NAV Canada, the Swiss equivalent of Skyguide, to test the integration of commercial UAVs into air traffic. The start-up will deploy its infrastructure on telecom antennas and towers to create air corridors to develop drone flights.

Involi will also be working alongside Telus, the equivalent of Swisscom in Switzerland, with the opportunity to collaborate with certain players in the oil and gas sector, for example.

“Industrial inspection using drones is a reality today, but it is slow to be widely adopted because of the great variability in state regulations. This full-scale test will facilitate access to this practice for companies that need it. In addition, the result of this experiment will have a big influence on the regulations for the integration of UAVs in Canada,” explains Mélanie Guittet, co-founder and business manager of Involi.

The start-up, founded in 2017 and based in Renens in the canton of Vaud, develops a patented technology that enables drones to integrate safely into air traffic through real-time data collection.

Thanks to this solution, a drone pilot can see on his smartphone or directly on his aircraft’s control tablet the flying objects detected by his network, particularly those at low altitude (below 600 meters), and thus avoid collisions.

In 2019, Involi became a partner of the U-space project implemented by Skyguide in collaboration with the Federal Office of Civil Aviation. This is the first fully digitized drone traffic management system in Europe, covering the entire Swiss territory.