World Champion Austria Drones
Little high flyers with loads of potential Drones are a hot topic right now. Austrian high-tech companies and research institutes can play a big role here.
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Austrian initiative There are also other areas where drones are becoming increasingly important and which are being tackled by numerous companies and research institutes. They include the inspection of industrial
plants and infrastructures, land surveying, aerial photography, stock-taking, supporting rescue workers, pinpoint pest control in agriculture and traffic surveillance. In Austria, drones first cropped up in 2007 with basic research, exploring fields of applications and regulations for their integration into new mobility concepts. The AirLabs project was created in early 2020 and should give drone research additional tailwind. The Austrian Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology supports the establishment and operation of test infrastructures for drones within the “Take Off” aviation programme, which is the national RTI (research, technology and innovation) programme for civil aviation. AIRlabs Austria covers research and development, validation and deployment of unmanned aircraft in a real environment across all technology levels. A total of over four million euros will be invested in the five-year project, two million of which will come from the Research Promotion Agency (Forschungsfördergesellschaft FFG).
Photo: AAU/Daniel Waschnig
or a long time, unmanned aerial vehicles were the stuff of science fiction movies. But by now they have become reality and are flying high both physically and metaphorically. An analysis of the Hamburg-based consultation agency Drone Industry Insights shows that the civil drone sector turned over about 14 billion US dollars in 2018. In 2019, that figure rose to roughly 20 billion and by 2024 the agency expects an increase to 43 billion. One of the main reasons for this development is that drones are becoming smaller and smaller, more lightweight and easier to handle. This concept turned the Chinese manufacturer Da Jiang International Sciences and Technology (DJI) in only a few years from an ambitious startup into a global market leader. This success is not necessarily considered positive in the United States and Europe, where there is a lot of effort to become the drivers of research and development. A new study by consultants Roland Berger shows that there are about 110 projects, half of them in Europe, that deal with the usability of drones in the transport sector.
Stephan Weiss in the Drone Hub in Klagenfurt, which opened in late 2019.
Taking off “Airlabs will contribute significantly to the development and testing of new technologies for future mobility. With its help, Austria can position itself not only as a test region for autonomous driving but also for au-
