CANARD Drones, FIWARE technology for air navegation 

According to EUROSTAT, 879.4 million passengers travelled by air in the European Union in 2014, up by 4.4% compared with the previous year.  Today more than ever, safety is the number one priority for the air industry. In fact, as FINODEX Project states, international airports spend 2.5 billion euros annually on flight inspections including checks and calibrations of navigation aids performed by crew members, resulting in 1.89 billion euros of lost income and 51 tonnes of CO₂ emitted to the atmosphere.

In this context, the Spanish company CANARD was set up, an organization which aims to improve the security systems at airports by replacing the current calibration units with CANARD UAVs, drones equipped with sensors and connected in real time with a ground based data management system. These mechanisms automatically perform flight inspection process with 0% emissions and it complies with all international security regulations.

In this service, CANARD combines sensors, Internet of Things, augmented reality and open data with FIWARE technologies. Thus, the entity offers an innovative solution that can save millions of euros to the international airport market. According to the need of this service, CANARD re-uses mainly three types of open data:

●  Geographic data and drone location data, using OpenMaps data.

●  Meteorological data to make the weather forecast and decisions about the operation.

●  Descriptive data of the airports provided by each of them in an open format.

This system take advantage of FIWARE generic enablers and domain-specific enablers- to obtain an ready-to-use MVP (minimum viable product). This technology has been chosen by its capability of merging Internet of Things into the state of art project. Thus, it is possible to integrate security, augmented reality and the signals coming from the drones into a modular application that can be scaled depending on the needs of each client. The FIWARE capabilities are also used to implement the core functionalities and user interface, and the final implementation of the project provides a homogeneous and automatic mechanism to calibrate the airport’s PAPI lights (precision approach path indicators).

The FIWARE technology cannot be understood without the support of the community and that is the main benefit for CANARD team identifies to use this software platform.

Thanks to collaboration and continuous improvement of this open and sustainable ecosystem, FIWARE has brought new ideas to the European market and helps EU be at the cutting-edge of technology. 

Finally, anyone interested in the technology and advances of CANARD Drones can follow the company on its official Twitter account, @canarddrones, to know the steps of its team and the last news about the entity.