CANARD DRONES continues to complete its range of inspection services for airport and navigational aid systems.

The visual aid package is already in service, that is, inspection and calibration of PAPI, ALS and Runway Lightning. Survey of pavement condition, detection objects on the runway, and inspection of radio aids (VOR and ILS) will be added in a few months.

The PAPI calibration solution began to be commercialised at the beginning of 2018, with very good reception in the markets that have been touched so far. During this time, the company has carried out operations from regional airports to large international airports such as Charles de Gaulle in Paris. Among others, the PAPI system has been calibrated at Spanish, French, Polish, Finnish and Swedish airports.

As an example of the flexibility that CANARD proposes, the PAPI calibration solution can be operated day and night, which facilitates its programming by the airport authorities, so that it affects the normal operations of the airport as little as possible. At Charles de Gaulle, Canard performed the requested calibration of 4 PAPI systems in a single night.

The solution for the ALS inspection has already been carried out successfully at two Spanish airports, Murcia and Huesca. The solution for the inspection of runway lights has been successfully operated at three Spanish airports, Murcia, El Hierro and Huesca.

Automatic procedures and software tools developed by CANARD allow inspections to be carried out consistently in a few minutes (about ten minutes for a PAPI system, and only three minutes for ALS). The company is developing computer vision and machine learning algorithms, to achieve more accurate and repeatable inspections and a reduction in costs and time.

This complete package for lights will include pavement inspections very soon. CANARD offers this solution by carrying out the entire operation or operated by the customer or a third party authorised, trained and validated by CANARD. In this case, maintenance and support for the operation are provided by CANARD.

Finally, the start-up from Madrid is developing a solution for the maintenance and inspection of ILS, VOR and other radio-aids. This development is very advanced and will be available to the market during the second half of the year.