While the US argues over registration of hobby drones, Japan is rushing forward with efforts to develop the drone industry as part of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s efforts to take advantage of “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
Tokyo-based startup Clue has announced DroneCloud, a data management service for drones. The service is designed for any commercial drone application, and manages a variety of data points specific to drone applications. DroneCloud can record, share, and manage data points such as who operates which drone, which pilots are operating drones for specific projects, flight logs and routes, and project management. The tool can manage flight plans and documents, store photos and videos, and handle all kinds of record keeping such as weather conditions during each flight, model specs of the drones flown, flight hours of individual pilots, and repair and maintenance updates.
Serial entrepreneur Ryosuke Abe, CEO and founder of Clue tells VentureBeat:
DroneCloud is a cloud service for companies using drones on their business. There are few peripheral services supporting their efficient drone operations such as managing drones and acquired data. We can support their safe and efficient operations by offering a service allowing them to manage various data in an integrated way. Since business use of drones are more advanced in the us and european countries, we will be forced to target the global market. That’s why we are offering the service in english as well as in Japanese.
Investors hope that the cloud-based platform will have a vast market, as a company statement says that the product is designed for “any case where drones are used, such as airborne imagery or surveying for construction sites, inspection of infrastructure, disaster-relief, crop-spraying.”
Abe told VentureBeat that DroneCloud was only the beginning of the company’s foray into the drone industry, saying that they intend to develop an entire operating system for drones. “We intend to make DroneCloud a must-have cloud service for drone businesses, providing an os control board that will enable seamless data integration with the cloud platform.”
Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, a professional drone services marketplace, and a fascinated observer of the emerging drone industry and the regulatory environment for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles focused on the commercial drone space and is an international speaker and recognized figure in the industry. Miriam has a degree from the University of Chicago and over 20 years of experience in high tech sales and marketing for new technologies.
For drone industry consulting or writing, Email Miriam.
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