Drones, successful projects on freight transport and environmental surveillance

Transporting goods, moving people, environmental surveillance and military applications. The drone economy staged in Bologna from 9 to 11 October with the Dronitaly event offered a series of examples and figures on a fast-growing sector.

And in which Central Italy also played a leading role in terms of content, with the University of Tor Vergata winning the contest organised by Leonardo with the project dubbed 'DottorCane'. The winning project is a duo of a drone and a robot with canine features that work together to find objects autonomously, a technology with multiple applications such as inspections in areas at risk or those affected by natural disasters. This is a very important result for the Roman university, given that it had been pursued for nine years and that the Leonardo Drone Contest put seven institutes in competition: the Polytechnics of Milan, Turin and Bari, the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa, the Alma Mater of Bologna and the Federico II of Naples and Rome Tor Vergata.

The Centre's excellence is not limited to technological applications, but also to those in the legal sector thanks to EuroUsc, a consulting company that provides services to manufacturers, operators, insurance companies and authorities operating in the aviation sector. Thanks to the work of this company, it has been possible to launch a number of practical projects such as Di-Pegasus - an acronym for Digital competitive next generation aviation technologies for sustainable business models products and services - the first Italian-led European project in the field of unmanned aircraft technologies, which will see tests begin in Emilia-Romagna for cargo transport. While in Campania, experimentation has begun in collaboration with Poste Italiane and Leonardo for the drone delivery of goods to the Aeolian islands as part of the 'Pilot service for the smaller islands' project.

These, however, are just some of the innovations presented at Dronitaly, which this year opened up to foreign companies for the first time and seems to have been a great success: 2,500 visitors, around 80 top-level national and international speakers and 50 exhibitors in 1,500 square metres. And it was precisely in this context that ENAC and its South Korean counterpart, the Korea Institute of Aviation Safety Technology (KIAST), signed a 'Memorandum of Understanding' at Dronitaly to implement cooperation on this topic.

According to the data that emerged during the three-day event in Bologna, there are currently about 500 cases of drone technology application, about half of which are for goods transport, a quarter for passenger transport, and the remainder for different uses including military. Italy plays an important, albeit niche, part in this latter sector with examples such as the P2HH Hammerhead drone, produced by Piaggio Aero and Leonardo. This device has a wingspan of 21.4 metres and a length of 14.4 metres.