Wingtra drones are used by organizations around the world, including NASA and the Army Corps of Engineers, to carry out surveying missions. Now, the startup is formulating a new expansion strategy after he raised $22 million in Series B funding. This is used to improve our current technology and add new features. “Our product roadmap is sensitive, but our high-level vision, looking a decade or so ahead, is to get people out of the loop and have fully automated data collection, processing and analysis. Let’s just say that, he told TechCrunch.
Based in Zurich, Switzerland, with offices in Fort Lauderdale and Zagreb, and nearly 200 employees, Wingtra claims to be the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drones. We develop the WingtraPilot app for mapping drones, developing software for fully automated flight, and collecting and processing aerial survey data. Wingtra drones are used by surveyors in a wide range of industries including construction, mining, environmental monitoring, agriculture, urban planning and land management.
Of the images taken with the WingtraOne drone
Investors in Aerial Mobility Fund Wingtra’s Series B are DiamondStream Partners, EquityPitcher Ventures, Verve Ventures, Ace & Company, European Innovation Council Fund (EIC Fund), Ace & Company, and Spring Mountain Capital founder John L. Steffens.
The origins of Wingtra came together in 2014 when Boosfeld, Basil Weibel, Elias Kleimann and Sebastian Verling started working on their thesis while studying at the Autonomous Systems Lab in ETH Zurich. The paper proposed a design for a small unmanned aerial vehicle that could take off and land vertically like a helicopter, but could transition to fixed-wing mode for long-range flight.
While still working on their thesis, the four registered Wingtra as a company and developed and commercialized the technology. They have been accepted into the Wyss Zurich Accelerator Program, an incubator for commercializing scientific breakthroughs from ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. Wingtra One, a professional mapping and surveying UAV, was developed while participating in the program.
Wingtra’s flagship drone is now the WingtraOne VTOL commercial drone, used by hundreds of companies and organizations in 96 countries, including NASA, Texas A&M University, Ohio State University, CEMEX, Rio Tinto, the Army Corps of Engineers and Kenya. increase. Red Cross. In total, WingtraOnes makes more than 100,000 flights each year, mapping 18 million acres of land and sea.
The startup’s second-generation drone, released in 2021, will be called the WingtraOne Gen II and will produce survey-grade 2D and 3D maps with an RGB camera. Wingtra says he can digitize a single flight covering more than 100 hectares at 0.5 in/px, up to 30 times faster and 90 percent cheaper than a ground survey.
The three main industries Wingtra sells to are construction and industry, urban planning and land development and mining.
Boosfeld told TechCrunch that the biggest challenge in managing such a large asset is having access to up-to-date, accurate, and affordable data. Lack of data leads to inefficiencies, high costs and avoidable CO2 emissions. However, ground surveying is labor intensive and can be dangerous, as is the case with large construction sites, and in the event of a natural disaster such as a landslide, it cannot be done without endangering lives and fines. is impossible.
Wingtra dones is operational under all these conditions and aims to make asset management more efficient and sustainable at scale. Startups can collect survey-grade data up to 30 times faster than other surveying methods, including other drones and ground tools, and the WingtraPilot app’s simple operating system and automated route planning help He says it can be operated with minimal training.
One example of an organization using Wingtra drones to streamline survey data collection is the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT), which oversees the maintenance of the state’s road infrastructure. ALDOT flies drones over construction projects daily and uses the data collected to help, for example, ensure that erosion control measures, such as silt fences, are installed properly.
Another example of how Wingtra is being used is the Kenyan Red Cross. It deployed the startup’s drones and software to manage large-scale locust infestations. The data collected using Wingtra allowed us to track locust swarm movements, crop damage and ultimately make decisions about how to mitigate the infestation.
When it comes to competition, Wingtra’s most prominent rivals are AgEagle’s eBee and DJI’s Phantom 4 RTK and M300. According to Boosfeld, the eBee is the first drone to pave the way for accessible industry-level drone photogrammetry. Both lead the research and mapping field for different reasons. The eBee X is a fully industrialized and reliable fixed-wing survey and mapping drone, and the WingtraOne offers his VTOL combination and top-of-the-line image quality for coverage. But their main differentiator lies in their takeoff and landing technology, says Boosfield.
WingtraOne’s VTOL allows you to take off and land like a multicopter and transition to fixed wing for wide area coverage. The eBee X, on the other hand, is a traditional fixed-wing drone that must be manually taken off and landed on its belly. Boosfield said that means operators need to ensure that takeoffs and landings are done with wide clearance and on sufficiently dry and soft terrain. he supports it He added that high-end aerial mapping his cameras are heavy and fixed-wing drones like the eBee X cannot support that weight. “Currently, only his VTOL drone can offer 42MP image resolution, which will improve accuracy and ultimately make map reconstruction more reliable,” he said.
As for the Phantom 4 RTK, which is marketed as a survey and mapping drone, Boosfield said it doesn’t have much in common with the WingtraOne. Unlike WingtraOne, the Phantom 4 RTK is a typical multi-rotor. In other words, it behaves like a helicopter in the air. This difference means that multi-rotors like the Phantom 4 RTK cover a relatively limited area, while the WingtraOne can cover a wider area than most mapping projects require.
DJI’s M300 is a large multi-rotor drone that Boosfield says is good for inspection, search, rescue and other medium-range applications, but it’s not as efficient as dedicated mapping systems. For example, even though it’s bigger than the Phantom 4, it’s still a multi-rotor that relies solely on a large battery to keep it up.
Wingtra also doesn’t have to deal with the political issues that DJI does in the US market. In the US market, it has been blacklisted by the US Department of Defense due to its alleged ties to the Chinese military.
In a statement about the investment, DiamondStream Partners’ Dean Donovan said: Product usability, reliable engineering and global network of value-added resellers and service providers map his $83 billion+ of the aviation information market Expanding his segment leadership globally can. As Wingtra continues to expand, we look forward to supporting the company in the increasingly important regions of the United States and Latin America. ”
