Drones create value for your business

Drones are the future! In the past couple of years the drone-industry has conquered the world and with the seemingly endless number of applications in almost every industry, the sky literally is no longer the limit.

Jan De Schepper (Chairman, ADM) kicked off the afternoon program with his welcome word.  He also announced a special program where ADM will extend a handshake to help them conquer the skills that ADM stands for: Share & Connect!  In the course of the next months there will be several activities leading up to a networking event later this year.

Next on the program was Veerle Heeren (mayor Sint-Truiden).  Over the last few years she has been a leading figure in getting Droneport off the grounds.  She made a case why Sint-Truiden is a great basis for companies to get started in the Drones area and outside of it

Veerle was followed by Peter Dedrij (business development manager, Droneport). He gave an insight into where Droneport currently stands and what the future holds. The cross fertilization between the academic, research, governmental institutions and the business is paying off and will be the success to making Droneport a European hub! If you’d like to learn more, be sure to head over to the Related tab and discover the full presentation by Peter Dedrij.

Time for BeUAS to update the attendees on the drone scene. Patrick Mascart  (Chairman BeUAS) explained that the mission of BeUAS (Information, Sensibilisation, Consultation and Promotion) are coming to fructuation.  With over 400 members, the BeUAS is becoming the partner for government and business when it comes to Drones. Rediscover the full presentation by Patrick Mascart in our Related tab.

Drones are a hot topic when it comes to regulations and privacy, so Europe has decided to create unanimous legislation.  Koen De Vos (Belgian representative in the European Commission team) brought us an update of the progress of the legislation. You can find the full presentation by Koen de Vos at the Related Tab.

To end the presentation part of the afternoon we listened Mark Vanlook (chairman EUKA). He explained that EUKA wants to support in the acceleration, expansion and deepening of this new drone industry by being a ‘guide’ or ‘front office’ for the multiple companies and organisations involved.  He went on to say there are plenty of promising drone applications, but also multiple obstacles and missing industry links.  This makes it difficult for the European Drone Industry to outgrow this first phase. For both the drone supplier as for the drone end user the industry is quite complex and relatively unknown.  EUKA wants to be go-between to bridge these gaps.

After the plenary session our participants had the opportunity to see the drones at work (even if weather conditions were not perfect).  Companies showing their realisations were:

• AETOS Drones (inspection & mapping)
• Airobot (UAV hardware, sense & avoid) 
• Omnifly (drones for passenger transport)
• DroneMatrix (tethered drone/security drone)
• Unifly (UAV traffic management software)
• CargoCopter (drones for deliveryservices)
• VITO (Research & development UAV)
• Gatewing (fixed wing drone platforms)

Before starting the final networking moment and giving the attendees the chance to test a drone for themselves, Marc Lambotte (CEO Agoria) took to the stage to give his final remarks on this session. During his presentation he insisted that the Belgian legislation and exam be really looked into and made to the point instead of follow the current pilot flow.  He also insisted on getting the European law in sync. You can find the full presentation by Marc Lambotte under our RelatedTab.

Be sure to head over to the Pictures tab and see the pictures we took during the event.

Under the Related tab you can download all presentations as given during the event.

ADM made it into the media! Head over to the Related tab for videoreports and newsarticles about this event

Our Social Media Manager, Mic Adam, has taken the time to compile some tweets in a handy Storify that sums up the event in your own words: