The public sector, and society in general, is increasingly aware of the great potential of the use of drones for the benefit of citizens. Twenty-five years ago this potential was focused on military applications, but today applications of great interest for the civilian sphere are also beginning to consolidate.
The boom in drone systems in recent years has been growing year after year, with more than 94,000 operators registered in the registry of the State Aviation Safety Agency (AESA) by the end of 2023, which is 32% more than in 2022, and more than 180,000 pilots certified since the regulation came out.
In the 1990s, drone manufacturing companies coined the term "3D" to explain in a very clear way the possible applications of drones: Dangerous, Dull, Dirty. That is, drones were for applications that were dangerous, tedious or dirty (or the sum of them).
Currently this 3D concept, although still in force, has evolved towards the "3S": Safety, Sustainability and Society, denoting a clear shift towards in-flight and ground safety of people and goods, preservation of the environment and services to society.
Although there are other specific niche applications, the two major fields of civilian application of drones by the public sector are observation and transportation.
Observation applications develop the "eye-in-the-sky" concept. This capability allows the development of a huge number of very diverse applications, from the drone that measures the speed of a car to fine the driver if he exceeds the speed limit of the stretch, through applications for counting and identifying people in crowds, intrusion in security perimeters, rescue services at sea, monitoring of roads (roads, power lines, gas pipelines), monitoring of forest fires, volcano eruptions, hurricane or earthquake damage, spills at sea, etc. All of them exist today, are available, and are beginning to be used by the public sector in accordance with current regulations, which still limit them.
In the transport of goods, a service of great interest is the transport of specific products that cover important needs to isolated or remote areas, such as medicines, documents, clinical samples, organs or spare parts. Numerous projects around the world aim to provide this type of service safely.
With regard to passenger transportation, one of the most innovative and impressive applications is Urban Air Mobility (UAM). There are more than thirty companies in the world, including Airbus, Boeing and Hyundai, which are developing what are known as AAV, Autonomous Aerial Vehicles, or eVTOL (electronic Vertical Take-Off and Landing).
These are vertical take-off and landing vehicles, powered by electric batteries, which will allow door-to-door transport of people, without a pilot, especially in cities. This type of project represents a major technological challenge, requiring not only the design and manufacture of these aerial platforms, but also their full certification, their integration into conventional airspace, and the development of a network of infrastructures to enable their operation, including communication systems, aircraft tracking and identification systems, etc., and the appropriate buildings and facilities for landing, take-off and passenger and aircraft handling, within cities: vertipuertos or droneports.
The development of all these services is gradually being consolidated with advances in the regulatory area, which is essential to guarantee their safety.
Since 2014, Novadays accompanies various governments in their programs and projects in the unmanned vehicles segment, as part of their innovation, industry, security or emergency policies.