Drone Focus was a day-long celebration of innovation in the UAS industry; for speaker Baptiste Tripard, it was also a day of personal celebration.
“I actually realized backstage that it’s kind of my birthday today,” he announced to the audience.
In June 2012, Tripard left France to take on a new role as Manager of Business Development at senseFly, a Parrot Company that develops and produces aerial imaging drones.
In the five years since, Tripard has seen immense strides taken in the UAS industry. One advancement, which he focused on in his presentation, is eBee.
eBee is a professional mapping drone developed by senseFly. In 2013, senseFly partnered with nonprofit Drone Adventures to map the surface of Switzerland’s largest mountain, the iconic Matterhorn. The mountain had previously been mapped by foot and satellite; it took one German company one year and a million dollars to produce an image. senseFly and Drone Adventures were able to do the same with just 24 hours and six drones, each somewhere in the range of $15,000.
Tripard sees applications for drones in several fields. They can be “a gamechanger” in the world of agriculture, with benefits for water and nitrogen management, insurance claims, and yield prediction; in inspection of power lines and structural problems; and, most valuable to him, surveying.
“This is the reason I’m so excited about drone technology,” Tripard said.
In 2014, the spatial analysis team at the University of Hawaii used a senseFly swinglet CAM UAV to map lava flow. Such applications, Tripard said, can assist in evacuation and disaster management.
senseFly has also been a part of the Race for Water Odyssey, using two drones to produce aerial images of oceans and raise awareness of water pollution.
As for the future of the industry, Tripard is hopeful about the evolution of UAS regulation in the United States.
“The reason I kept my job all these years was sometime, we knew it was going to happen,” he said, positing that major changes will be made in the next month. “The US will become one of the most liberal countries in the world in drone regulation.”
Tripard explained that the FAA has already taken one big step by simplifying the registration process. The next changes, he believes, will eliminate the need for a pilot’s license in order to operate a drone, reduce the minimum number of people needed to conduct a mission from two to just one, and raise the sailing altitude from 400 to 500 meters. All of these changes, he said, should make drone use cheaper and more accessible.
“Today, three or four thousand companies in the US can fly drones,” he said. “Soon, anyone will be able to.”
As for his senseFly birthday, Tripard was very excited to be celebrating in Fargo.
“North Dakota is the state that matters in the drone industry,” he said.
