The Cyprus Institute inaugurates its Unmanned Aircraft Research Facility

The Cyprus Institute has presented its unmanned aircrafts, which in the defense community are known as “drones”.

After more than four years of intensive work, the Cyprus Institute inaugurated its Unmanned Aircraft Research Facility, which was developed in the framework of the “Autonomous Flying Platforms for Atmospheric and Earth Surface Observation” project (APAESO).

APAESO aims at providing the research infrastructure for sophisticated atmospheric measurements, but is also intended to address changes in climate-related transformations in vegetation cover, oceanic biological activities or contamination of water reservoirs, to name but a few of the possible remote sensing applications.

According to the Cyprus Institute, to pursue these ambitious goals, the Facility comprises four medium-sized and one smaller research aircrafts, a mobile ground control station, a fully equipped laboratory and workshop and a host of scientific instruments.

Once fully operational, the Cyprus Institute’s Unmanned Research Aircraft Facility will be made available to the research community of Cyprus and will open up new and exciting prospects for environmental research in Cyprus.

The APAESO project is co-financed by the European Development Fund and the Republic of Cyprus through the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation.

The inauguration ceremony was attended and addressed by Minister of Communications and Works Tasos Mitsopoulos, who said that the Cyprus Institute “acquires a modern and powerful research tool”.

“This makes Cyprus a point of reference in the wider Mediterranean region and the Middle East,” the Minister said.  — (KYPE)