The world's first water-air drone successfully performs remote underwater photography - Safe and efficient inspection of offshore wind power generation facilities without leaving the ship -

Mechanism of water-air combination drone

On November 17, 2021, Prodrone, KDDI, and KDDI Research Institute successfully conducted a demonstration (hereinafter referred to as this demonstration) of autonomously flying the world's first water-air combined drone and remotely photographing underwater conditions.

A water-air combination drone is a drone that combines an aerial drone and an underwater drone, allowing it to fly in the sky and dive into water. It also supports mobile communications, allowing autonomous flight, remote control, and real-time transmission of images from aerial and underwater cameras. Furthermore, the acoustic positioning device allows you to dive and take photos while checking your position even underwater, where satellite positioning systems (GPS) cannot be used.

In this demonstration, we used a water-air drone to take underwater photographs with the aim of inspecting offshore wind power generation facilities (hereinafter referred to as offshore wind power) and surveying the status of seaweed beds that serve as fishing reefs. Traditionally, underwater photography required a large boat to be sent out and a diver to take pictures underwater, but this demonstration has succeeded in safely and efficiently capturing images using a water-air hybrid drone, and we can expect cost and time savings in the future.

This demonstration was conducted at the J-Power Wakamatsu General Office in cooperation with Electric Power Development Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director, President and Executive Officer: Hajime Watabe; hereinafter referred to as J-Power).

The three companies will continue to conduct demonstrations with various partners and work on the practical application of hydro-air drones, so that dangerous underwater work such as fisheries and underwater infrastructure inspections can be carried out more safely and efficiently.

For details, see here Please see the KDDI presentation materials.

water-air combination drone

■Experiment video