Elimco:- High Precision landings

Speaking to sUAS News Rodrigo Valdivieso is confident of the future UAS market. He shared a compelling video of a precision automated landing. I think I would have put it on the grass though!

The first image that comes to mind to most of us when speaking of UAS is a military UAS. But truth is there is a silent and very unknown UAV industry that is moving in small but unstoppable steps as we talk.

The industrial UAS are starting to be considered in many fields. Ok, they are not yet widely in use but probably they will.


Elimco (Spain) is doing its part by providing on a continuous basis industrial services for precision farming, surveillance, intelligence and specially for topography.

Industrial UAV operation has to be perfect and very precise to deliver high quality data/products.

That is one of the reasons why Elimco UAS is actually performing a series of successful high precision training landings to be implemented in actual industrial operations with the E-300 Viewer.

The objective of these high precision landings is to fine tune the landing parameters of the E300 Viewer system  which in turn will widen the already broad landing capabilities of this UAV so it will be possible to be operated in even more difficult conditions and confined areas.

The video features a landing of the E-300 Viewer on an abandoned road bordered with lamp posts. The separation between the lights is around 10m. The UAV has a wingspan of 5m. That means that during the landing, at some point, the wintips of the UAV were travelling at 80Km/h at a distance of just 2,5m away from the posts. All, of course, under total autonomous autopilot control (a human, simply could not do this).

Precision landings like this have been made possible with a proven airframe like the E300 and a proven autopilot like the Cloud Cap Piccolo II with DGPS which offers a 3 dimensional precision of 2cm.

Gary Mortimer

Founder and Editor of sUAS News | Gary Mortimer has been a commercial balloon pilot for 25 years and also flies full-size helicopters. Prior to that, he made tea and coffee in air traffic control towers across the UK as a member of the Royal Air Force.