Redbird, a drone analytics company based in France, is growing its American presence, setting up a headquarters in San Francisco.
Emmanuel de Maistre, CEO and co-founder of the company, told DroneLife he expects the new US unit to be operational by the end of the year.
Started in 2013, Redbird provides comprehensive, cloud-based drone analytics to large industrial companies seeking to optimize their operations and improve productivity and safety.
With applications that primarily serve the construction, mining and quarrying sectors, the Redbird platform is not drone specific and can serve as a data back end for imaging data collected from any number of drones.
De Maistre said that Redbird has developed powerful algorithms that automatically extract information about productivity and safety of industrial operations. And by harnessing the power of the cloud, Redbird customers can easily access, annotate, share, and collaborate drone based information.
In December of last year, the company entered into an agreement with Caterpillar, with the equipment manufacturing giant agreeing to be a Redbird reseller.
“Drones are entering a new phase, with data analytics as the heart of this evolution,” said de Maistre. “Our solutions have been developed with leading construction companies and quarry operators for the past two years, helping them extract the real value out of drone data.”
De Maistre told DroneLife the regulatory environment in the US has been a hurdle, but he expects that with Part 107 soon being made official that the hurdle will be reduced in size. De Maistre also said he believes that the US and China will be the two largest commercial markets for commercial drone applications, adding that the pace of innovation happens much faster in the states than in Europe.
Find out more about Redbird here.
Alan is serial entrepreneur, active angel investor, and a drone enthusiast. He co-founded DRONELIFE.com to address the emerging commercial market for drones and drone technology. Prior to DRONELIFE.com, Alan co-founded Where.com, ThinkingScreen Media, and Nurse.com. Recently, Alan has co-founded Crowditz.com, a leader in Equity Crowdfunding Data, Analytics, and Insights. Alan can be reached at alan(at)dronelife.com