​“Hack the Drone” Workshop at the Usine IO

In her opening remarks, Muriel Preux from the DGAC reminded the audience of French legislation on the subject of drones, which is focused on ensuring personal safety, and presented four set scenarios for drone piloting.

Her presentation raised technical questions and requests for more information from a visibly well-informed audience.

The missions to be accomplished in the hackathon were then presented by their respective leadership pairs and trios.

Anti-Collision Drone: presentation by Jérôme Bouvard from Parrot and Captain Gigan, Commander of the Drone Excellence Center of Provence.

Captain Gigan suggested applying cognitive algorithms to human beings to manage drone avoidance. “Getting inspiration from living things to create something innovative.”

Jérôme Bouvard from Parrot presented the Be Bop, the ultra-light drone produced by Parrot that will be awarded to hackathon participants for their participation. With a 14 million pixel camera and weighing in at just 380 grams, the Be Bop has been called a “flying video camera”.

The Drone Testing Challenge was presented by Andres Galnares from GDF SUEZ (CRIGEN), Emmanuel de Maistre and Damien Grosgeorges from Redbird. This mission involves finding ways (for example) to use drones to check on the corrosion or deformation of gas piping across the 132,000 km of transport and distribution networks in France.

Systems for automatically and precisely analyzing images produced by drones and for extracting information from them are much needed.

As stated by Damien Grosgeorges, “If you like challenges, choose this mission!”

The Drone Neutralization mission: presented by Philippe Sirey Jol from GDF SUEZ (INEO Défense) and by Captain Gigan.

Sirey Jol reminded audience members of the things at stake in this mission: before being neutralized, drones must be detected and localized. It is also essential to determine whether the type of backup used in the drone is compatible with the neutralization technique selected.

For the Drone Metering Challenge, Pascal Delcey from GDF SUEZ (Cofely Axima) and Vincent Chauvin (Cofely Endel) presented examples of drones used for metering and measurements (in power plants, for example). While also saving time and ensuring better safety for personnel, using drones for topometric measurements could also save millions of euros.

Djavan Bertrand from Parrot concluded by presenting the SDK3, which makes it possible to pilot small drones such as the Be Bops provided to hackathon participants for their experiments.

After a recap of GDF SUEZ’s innovation process and the OpenInnov Platform by Ludovic Parisot, the workshop ended with a big sushi buffet during which participants were able to continue talking with each other and with presenters.

A special mention goes out to the top questioner, Charles from the startup Novalta, and see you all next weekend at the Ecole 42 for the Drone Hackathon.

Sign up and get more information: http://hackthedrone.bemyapp.com/