France Moves Forward on Drone Regulations as Azur Drones gets OK for Autonomous Flights

 Azur Drones, a French based provider of  UAVs that are used for surveillance and other applications has just received the first  DGAC approval for a fully-automated drone which takes off from a docking station and requires no remote pilot.

This approval allow the product named Skeyetech drones to flyover private areas, Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS), fly day or night, and in urban areas, under simple supervision of a remote operator. With this approval, the system will be directly operated by a security guard with no pilot license. The drone will thus be used to patrol the area or provide valuable aerial information in case of an alarm.

“We are very proud of this approval which rewards an 18-month close collaboration with DGAC services. Our system had to comply with the civilian aviation authorities’ requirements in terms of safety, reliability and quality. A process that was obviously very demanding due to the fully automated character of our system”, explains Stéphane Morelli, Azur Drones Managing Director.

“This unprecedented approval is a landmark event for professional civil drone”, adds Jean-Marc Crépin, Azur Drones CEO. “Azur Drones unlocks huge markets that are currently restrained by the complexity of common drone solutions implementation. Unlike standard piloted solutions, our systems are easy-to-use, operational 24/7, precise and reliable.”

The press release states that with this authorization, Azur Drones aims to make autonomous drone a standard in the security market, in France the rest of Europe and overseas.

Autonomous Drones are gaining in popularity for certain applications.  We have recently written about California based,  Apollo Robotics who has announced a developer toolkit for autonomous drone applications.  Israel based Percepto has a security based system based for port security.   In Japan, autonomous drones are being used to look for radioactive hot spots.