CHRONICS TECHNOLOGIES

Drones are increasingly present in our daily lives and in all fields of industry, from agriculture to defence, construction and insurance. However, these machines generally carry light loads and are rarely capable of flying for more than 30 minutes at a time, which is hampering the development of current applications. Their increased autonomy will open the way to new applications.

Chronics is a new class of multi-rotor drone whose autonomy is enhanced by the ability to glide. The innovation concerns a new wing technology which, added to a drone, does not alter its behaviour. This innovation is based on the confluence between the established aerodynamic concepts and the advanced algorithms developed at the Gipsa-lab laboratory.

This type of drone has significantly more autonomy while maintaining the advantages of a multi-rotor drone, i.e. vertical take-off and landing, agility, ease of piloting and reduced cost.

The principles have been validated by laboratory experimentation and simulation. The team is currently working on the production of working prototypes and the assessment of their performance.

Applications requiring a heavy load and/or a long range can take advantage of this type of drone. Examples of this would be delivery by drone, from the transport of samples to an air taxi service, or precision agriculture going from close-range mapping of a farm to targeted treatment.