Involi launches sales of first Remote Identification compatible drone tracker – Kivu

Lausanne, Switzerland: In its vision to enable a sky where drones safely fly alongside manned aviation, INVOLI launches the sales of first Remote Identification (Remote ID) compatible drone tracker: KIVU.

At only 22 grams, KIVU is the lightest drone tracker on the market, it has 2 hours of battery autonomy and it is self-sufficient with an embedded chargeable battery, being also rugged and particularly easy-to- use. KIVU is available for sale on the INVOLI web shop (www.involi.com) and includes a license for the INVOLI.live platform.

The advantage of the bundle with INVOLI.live is that KIVU users will be able to visualize at the same time the tracked drone and surrounding air traffic, while benefitting from all the other
advantages of the platform, such as dynamic geofencing around the drone, precise analytics tools and actionable insights.

“Our first trials with the INVOLI tracker were successful. It’s light enough to be used with our drones without causing any interference with our system’s communication, while delivering an accurate position in INVOLI’s platform. We were very happy with it!” stated Andrea Blindenbacher from senseFly.

KIVU is the first drone tracker on the market to comply with the Remote ID standard created by ASTM, one of the largest voluntary standards developing organizations in the world. KIVU will act like a “license plate” of the drone in the sky, broadcasting its unique ID and GPS position to other users of the sky and thus allowing drones equipped with KIVU to comply to the European Laws which require to transmit this information during the whole flight.

“Continuously tracking your drone with KIVU while checking your surroundings for potential collisions on a single platform helps minimizing risks in flight, even beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) – that is what KIVU and INVOLI.live bring to clients. But KIVU is an important product not only from the tracking perspective, but also because of its capability to enable Remote ID applications, which is an important aspect of drones’ integration into the air traffic around the world” said Manu Lubrano, CEO and Co-Founder of INVOLI. He added: “We take this opportunity to also raise an important signal about how intensely the drone industry has been working these past years and how the technology reached a level where it may be used during these delicate times that we are now all living.

There are many drone applications which could be extremely useful to fight epidemics or to ensure respect of the rules, such as spraying disinfectants or broadcasting messages, and we hope the public will soon benefit from all these opportunities.”

The tracker takes its name after Lake Kivu Challenge beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone
competition (www.africadroneforum.org), in Rwanda, where it was successfully used for the first time in February this year – each drone participating in this ambitious competition was equipped with a KIVU drone tracker, and feeding the Altitude Angel UTM allowed the teams to follow the flights in real-time and to stay safe.

About INVOLI:

INVOLI is a multi-award-winning Swiss company with a mission to safely and efficiently open the sky to all flying objects. INVOLI presents a paradigm shift in providing the currently missing air traffic data to drones: only by knowing where other aircraft may come from can one avoid it. Thus “giving eyes to drones” will facilitate their safe integration into an increasingly busy sky, enabling drones to avoid any other flying objects when on a collision course (airplanes, helicopters, drones, parachutists etc.)

INVOLI’s mixed hardware-software system integrates advanced surveillance data into third part software like UTM systems or drone flight management software, to unlock the full potential of drones across many sectors such as infrastructure, agriculture, surveying, aerial photography or urban air mobility.

INVOLI was founded by Manu Lubrano, Mélanie Guittet and Cristina Mihalachioiu in 2017 and is
headquartered in Renens (VD), Switzerland.

INVOLI is part of the Swiss U-Space Implementation, nation-wide collaborative effort for safely integrating drones into the airspace, led by the Swiss Civil Aviation Authority and Swiss Air Navigation Service Provider skyguide, alongside a growing group of industry stakeholders.
In 2019, INVOLI participated to SESAR funded project trials of GOF SESAR Project in Finland-Estonia to deploy its air traffic receiver and provide air traffic awareness to these ambitious demonstrations.

INVOLI is also a part of the 5G!Drones project, a European project funded under Horizon 2020
Programme, which aims at driving drone and 5G industries to a win-win position, by showing that 5G is able to accommodate the complex needs of the drone technology and can support challenging use cases that put pressure on network resources, such as low latency or ultra-reliable communications.

To learn more about INVOLI, visit: www.involi.com