COMPLEX "We wanted to integrate all kinds of systems," continues Jan Leyssens. "They have to communicate with each other, be supplied with power, have an autopilot function in the event of battery failure, and much more. We have been working on all these different aspects for a long time. The complexity of the joint technology, and the sub-areas within it, such as anticollision, GPS and data processing, was too great to create a working prototype within the time and budget". At the end of the Smart Tooling project an accurate georeferencing of images, automatic generation of 3D pointclouds and data sharing were realised. Avular created a 'mapperdrone' with half an hour of autonomy and a video data link. FIRST STEP INTEGRATION Within Smart Tooling, Avular and Airobot were able to build, coordinate and partially implement their own sub-components. "We were able to realise the first step of the integration within the project and also discuss it with future end users such as SPIE and the asset owners. This has given us as a company more insight into their data usage: very instructive for further developments, because we are going to continue working with Avular on this drone", says Jan Leyssens. INTERREG HAS WORKED "The basis we were able to lay is now a new integral tool for our company. We are using this as standard for automatic drone inspection of e.g. construction projects. So the Smart Tooling project has certainly worked for us! As a small company, you can take big steps with the Interreg subsidy". "We too have been given real opportunities through Smart Tooling," says Joop aan den Toorn. "We are a start-up and have worked with drones for all kinds of sectors, especially in agricultural and industrial applications. Through Smart Tooling we now have the right link with the world of industrial inspection. We can supply the optimum drone for their unique image requirements. It is a good business case, so we will continue with this project. Within this network, where you have the right people at the table. And thanks to this project, we were really able to innovate in complete freedom. There was cooperation between all sectors. As a result, we can now not only fly 3D paths with our new drone for indoor inspections, but we can also use the technology for ground robots and other drones". NEXT STEPS Jan Leyssens concludes: "The Smart Tooling project team felt that you had to be able to continue working as a start-up, but also knew exactly what the Interreg frameworks were like. They supported us very well with the project administration, it was not bureaucratic. We were free to use budgets as we saw fit. Now we are going to take the next steps. 17
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