Pelagic fisheries — Norway, Iceland, Denmark
Nine litres in ten are burned looking.
A Birdview drone carries a Simrad EK80 echosounder fifteen nautical miles from the hull and lowers it into the sea. You find the school before you spend the fuel chasing it — and you know the species and the size before you shoot the net.
- 01
Launch
Off the deck under way. No pilot, no net, no turning into the wind.
- 02
Transit
Out to the survey point — up to fifteen nautical miles from the hull.
- 03
Lower the probe
RTK holds the hover to the centimetre while the EK80 goes into the water.
- 04
Read the school
Split-beam return, classified on board. Species and size before the set.
- 05
Recover
Autonomous landing on the moving deck. Patent pending, worldwide.
Launched from a moving deck. Recovered on the same one.
Precise maritime launch and recovery of an autonomous multirotor, on RTK-GNSS positioning — tailor-made for harsh environments. No pilot on deck, no net, no crane.
The full system →- Seabird
- A UAV with a submersible sonar on board. The aircraft stays in the air — the winch lowers the echosounder into the sea.
- RTK-GNSS recovery
- Centimetre-level positioning holds the aircraft over a deck that is rolling, pitching and under way. Patent EP 3917826, granted.
- Swappable payload
- The Kongsberg Simrad EK80 split-beam for fisheries; camera and thermal for spotting, surveillance and inspection.
One airframe, three jobs.
Fishery
Find the school before you burn the fuel chasing it. Fuel is roughly half the revenue on a landed catch, and the fleet emits 544 million tonnes of CO₂ a year.
Surveillance
Cheaper than standing security. Deployed in minutes on programmable flight paths, with live video streamed to wherever you are.
Wind power inspection
Offshore turbines inspected with the same deck-to-deck autonomy the fishing system is built on — launched and recovered from a service vessel.
Six hundred and seventy-five boats still carry a helicopter to find fish.
A purse seiner's spotter aircraft costs between USD 0.4M and 2.5M, needs a pilot and a licensed mechanic living aboard, and is close to uninsurable — pilots ditch hours from the vessel. Swap the payload on the same airframe: camera and thermal instead of the echosounder, autonomous recovery instead of a helideck.
What the system is built on
- Sensor
- Kongsberg Simrad EK80 split-beam
- Patents
- EP 3917826 granted · NO/DK/IS · PCT pending
- Research
- SINTEF — AGENT-AI, Horizon EU CHIPS JU
- Based
- Oslo Science Park, Norway
- Peladrone
- AFRODITE & Ocean Tech Hub — small-scale fisheries, Portugal
- Offshore wind
- Norwegian Offshore Wind — member
- Insurance
- Coverdrone
Send us your fuel bill.
Tell us the vessel, the grounds and last year's diesel, and we will run the calculation on your numbers instead of the fleet average.