Saturday April 1, 2017, 00:36
A small conversation with a friend. That’s how the story of Canard starts from 2014. “Javier is an industrial engineer and works in Aena. He explained that security is the number priority in air transport, the second largest industry in the world in income after Petrochemicals,” Jorge Gómez, CEO of Canard, recalls. This is Canard’s approach of the Take -Off track.
The explanation of Aena about airport environments led Gómez to know the existence of composite materials to prevent electromagnetic interference, in particular with the most famous RadioAyuda bakes such as those of the Instrumental Landing System (ILS) of modern aircraft. “To favor safety, airports around the world use Air Navigation Aid Systems, a series of visual and radio beacons that help the pilots safely,” Gomez adds. And that is where Canard was born.
“At that time it came to me that, instead of manned aircraft, it would be cheaper, faster and more effective to use drones with started sensors to perform the same task, in addition to making flights autonomously, without CO2 emissions or noise and no human errors. I was investigated and there were no patents about it.”
AIDS systems for aerial navigation are inspected from the air using special aircraft that transport embedded sensors and systems that are designed to make the calibration of these beacons. Performing these inspections is a high costs for airports and the availability of these planes is very small because of their special characteristics. “To get an idea, in Spain there is a single plane that monitors the more than 50 airports on the national territory, including the islands,” Gomez notes.
With the idea in the head, Canard’s development led the founder to look for an expert in a drone construction. This adventure went to what his house was a few years earlier, the Ie Business School where he made parts of his studies. The proposal replied Ana Pérez, a space engineer who registered for Airbus who designs military planes and drones. “He loved the idea and suggested to work together,” adds the CEO “Startup”.
Weeks later, Rafael Aguado, friend and excommail from Gómez, and Juan Díaz, telecommunications engineer and expert in unmanned aircraft were added to the team. His knowledge enabled him to “extract data from the drone in a limited environment such as airports.”
Successful history
With just over a year of life, this Spanish “startup” collects milestones in its short history. As soon as he flew, he received financing from the European Space Agency (ESA) who earned them to work in their first prototype thanks to 170,000 euros. “In just twelve months we have succeeded in going from a first idea to a product that performs the real -time calibration of Air Navigation Aid Systems,” says the founder proudly.
The first successes of the young company immediately arrived at the sector. Seattle, Amsterdam Airports One of the instructions in innovation and technology and even Paris have already asked about their technology. The expiry of the months has led them to collect 350,000 euros in more than fifteen international prizes for innovation and entrepreneurship. Moreover, they have just closed a financing round of 1.2 million euros in London.
This success is also reflected in the Union with Microsoft. Both companies have reached an agreement with which Canard moves all its infrastructure from the Amazon Web Services Cloud to the “Cloud” solution of Microsoft Azure. “We use Azure, SharePoint and Microsoft surface to capture the data from the drones and to make the information for our customers. Thanks to this we have succeeded in reducing the time of calibration, and the costs around 25%,” says the founder.
