ThomasLaporte

That's a very good idea, we've heard about a ukrainian student who created a demining drone but for now we're on inspecting energy infra!

Ahaha a lot of people would love to hop in there (one day maybe ;) )

We've studied a lot batteries and drones and we don't think that drones will reach the specs we can get through a lighter than air aircraft. Even for civilian helicopters, today, they have between 2h and 3h of flight time usually. Military equipment won't be used for that kind of topic.

Yes exactly, we are doing a preventive maintenance solution. So we fly whenever possible to assess the condition of the power line.

We can withstand winds up to 10-11m/s. If there is more winds or rain that is forecasted then we'll just wait it out.

I think it might be to heavy for our use case.

Thank you!! Around 50ft to 150ft is a good range! Also, in the medium term there won't be any team co-ordinating the HyLighter on site. It will be remote pilot dealing with the object and just a driver delivering it a take off point and another one retrieving it at landing point.

"There are no dumb questions" - Oogway

Regular drones are awesome to make short missions (you need to check one electrical pylone or a small bridge - take a drone). But on bigger scale they don't have enough range to do this kind of operations. Also, they don't have enough payload. You can only fly with one camera, when the utilities need HQ camera, infrared, LiDAR etc. That's why they need to keep using helicopters.

Our envelope is antistatic so it reduces greatly the risks you are referring to. We can't wait to conduct a real life test of our hylighter crashing in a power line (there are places to conduct such tests in France).

That's awesome! Thank you for telling us! And hi from Paris ;)

Wow thank you so much for the support.

For now, we've focused a lot of our time on building the vector to gather the data. We did POC of code for real time power line following (so power line recognition and follow). We know that there are a lot of startups on this field of data analysis so we began scouting to see the level that is reached today. And decide if we should build our own model or use another one.

You are right! As we are in Europe we fill like this will be less of an issue than in the US.

Nevertheless, we will soon test what happened when we shout our flying HyLighters.

Exactly you are right, for now we are selling in Europe and the regulatory requirements are good.

It is indeed challenging! But our envelope will be antistatic so it will reduce ignition risks. And we are working at a safe distance from the lines.

Yeah they are very cool! We exchanged a bit and we meet on a regular basis!

Yes! We know them, they are nice people!!

Thank you very much!

Yeah going from one pylone's side to another will be hard. Especially because the components are quite fragile (like insulators).

That's awesome! In what situation did you had the opportunity to fly a H2 balloon?

Do you have any video that you could share about the lighting on fire of the balloon?

Thank you very much for your support!

We've made research and we aim to resist to 10 to 11m/s of wind speed. This would allow us to fly in 80% of regions of Europe, 80% of the time!

Actually to create a fire you need the 3 things: Fuel: in our case H2 Heat: in our case hot bullet Oxidizer: in our case there will be only H2 is the enveloppe (O2 won't have the time to enter the envelope along with the bullet). So a fire should not start.

We are not at that stage yet, but we can't wait to test it!

For now, our development is going well in France. We know that other companies are working in India, US, Finland.

I'm not sure but I think that this applies to manned airships.

Concerning wind effects, we aim to operate with winds up to 10m/s (we did 8,5m/s last week so it's going well!). If the winds are higher we will wait it out (exactly like other aircrafts do ie drones and helicopter in certain cases).

There are actually some startups working on robots that would hang/crawl from the lines. But, I feel like our clients like the "remote sensing" capacities and are not very much interested with (or even are afraid of) things touching their assets.

Thank you!!

Actually, it was exactly the same in France where we operate. It is written that H2 is forbidden but we asked the civil aviation authority and they told us that we just need to ask for the autorization to use this gas when we organize our flight approval. We asked the same question to the EU aviation authority and they told us that were not seeing any problem with using H2 as a lifting gas because of the great record of the Gordon Bennett Cup: https://balloonfiesta.com/Gordon-Bennett-2023. Which had no incident in many years.

Exactly our first inspections are in remote areas so it should be less of a problem. But, even with those small leaks it's not that much of a problem because the airship itself does not empty that fast!

Concerning your question on range: We will easily fly an entire day without refueling (and more), basically an entire day means 200 miles.

Safety is the most important thing when it comes to aerial industry. We are working with people who are manufacturing their own H2 gas balloons that litterally fly with people in it. Check it out: https://balloonfiesta.com/Gordon-Bennett-2023 There are special materials and glue that ensure safety from electricity and fire hazards (antistatic material). The people building their balloons use that kind of materials and it works!

Safety is the most important thing when it comes to aerial industry. We are working with people who are manufacturing their own H2 gas balloons that litterally fly with people in it. Check it out: https://balloonfiesta.com/Gordon-Bennett-2023

There are special materials and glue that ensure safety from electricity and fire hazards. The people building their balloons use that kind of materials and it works!

There is a fire hazard indeed! Exactly like with helicopters and their fuel. We need to respect strong process to deal with H2 in safe way.

Concerning wind effects, we aim to operate with winds up to 10m/s (we did 8,5m/s last week so it's going well!). If the winds are higher we will wait it out (exactly like other aircrafts do ie drones and helicopter in certain cases).

Actually, we're not the only one who thought about it. Since the 2000's some researchers or blimp enthusiasts launched research project like this. We're trying to apply it to a strong pain point in the energy industry.

Concerning the tradeoffs. It does increase leak potential but the materials and glues are in constant improvements. And, we do not need to oversize the envelope this much because the airship is extremely energy efficient and consume very little energy (during all our flight test we are always amazed when we have 80% left of battery or H2 at the end of the flights). But yes, for now, we keep fuel and lighter than air gas separated and we will keep this possibility for a long time.

Thank you for the feedback!