At this point, it is hard not to acknowledge that drone is perhaps the greatest creation in recent times. Thanks to its ability to vertical lift and hover, it has a lot more than capturing breathtaking aerial images. But regardless of its applications, all of them are plagued by the same flaws: breakage and water. And those are things that you do not want when you are surveying a disaster zone, inspecting a structure et cetera. While some may opt to ruggedized the unit, but to be honest, whenever a hard material goes head-on with another hard material, it is never a good news and that’s not to mention that drone will drow when it hits a waterbody.
Understanding those issues, Toulouse, France-based drone company Airvada has developed a novel drone that’s capable of surviving a crash on land or into water, and it is totally unaffected by downpour too. The drone, called DIODON, achieved this by adopting a non-traditional built material: it has an inflatable frame. And we are no even kidding. While inflatable may conjured up an image of a toy, particularly a pool toy, rest assure that DIODON is anything but a toy. It comes with compact electric pump for inflating the drone to its working size in under 60 seconds and since the internal of its airframe is of air mostly, DIODON can land on water if desired.
Moreover, the electronics are totally waterproof and therefore, operation can continue even when it is raining. Little is known about the technicality of this amazing drone, but according to the product website, the largest of the three models offered has a flight time of 35 minutes. Apart from size difference and the obvious battery capacity, the larger the drone, the bigger payload it will have. Speaking of payload, it appears that onboard camera is not included, but depending on the model, it will have HD video downlink system, a 2-axis stabilized HD video downlink system, or an optical and LWIR sensors on 3-axis stabilized gimbal.
Price is on application, so we can’t tell you how much a full system will run you back. One thing for sure, this ain’t your hobbyist type of drone.
Image via Tech Insider.
Airvada via Tech Insider.
