Skysense releases new drone charging stations

It’s taken a while for the market to catch up with the product, but Skysense CEO and founder Andrea Puiatti believes the company’s latest drone charging stations have found their niche.

When the Germany-based company started selling charging stations for drones in 2014. Puiatti admits that the demand for them had yet to materialize.

“When we went to the market, we were the first company with a drone charging station on the market,” Puiatti related. “There was no real market. We were a bit early.”

However, starting in late 2016, Skysense began attracting more interest and is now seeing a demand for its products, which can now be used indoors and outdoors to provide true autonomous drone operations.

Puiatti said company spent four years testing and perfecting its drone charging stations for numerous government and private entities looking at autonomous drone solutions for security and surveillance, inspections, logistics and other uses. The newest versions provide the fastest charging times yet, he said.

According to Puiatti, Skysense is helping to make autonomous drone applications a reality by eliminating the need for a human operator to manually recharge a drone’s batteries, deploy the aircraft and then collect it. By attaching a lightweight device to the drone, it can recharge while sitting on a Skysense pad. The company also makes a drone port to protect the aircraft from rain, snow and inclement weather while charging.

Skysense successfully developed and tested an indoor charging pad, but an outdoor version was a challenge that Puiatti said the company has solved.

“It’s made of stainless steel,” he said. “You can jump on it and it won’t break. It’s really rugged. You can clean it with water pressure, so it’s really an industrial-grade product.”

The outdoor charging pad is designed to accommodate larger, heavier drones, which is what Skysense customers wanted. Puiatti said the pad provides 20 amps for charging, although the design enables it to provide even more if needed.

“Most customers right now are interested in deploying our charging station indoors for surveillance,” Puiatti noted. “The outdoor version is being used for inspection of construction sites, power plants and also corporate facilities. In general, we’re seeing the charging pads used in areas that are hazardous to people.”

International security provider Prosegur is among the companies that have integrated Skysense drone charging infrastructure into its operation, Puiatti said.