The Drone Operator is the Most Irrelevant Part of the Drone Operation, Says Airobotics CEO

Automated drone company Airobotics Ltd. was founded in 2014 with the aim of creating the first automated drone system.

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“The drone operator is the most irrelevant part of the drone operation,” CEO Ran Krauss said Tuesday, speaking at Calcalist’s WeTechBerlin conference. “It’s expensive, they’re not available when you need them, and also, they’re imprecise.”

Since its foundation, Airobotics raised over $110 million from investors including BlueRun Ventures, Charles River Ventures, and Noam Bardin, the Israeli-born CEO of Waze and a vice president at Google. The company operates three facilities in Israel, the U.S., and Australia.

“Airobotics has a pretty big vision, and it is mostly related to smart cities,” Krauss said, detailing how drone technology can be used to create a digital twin of a city, or a model in virtual reality.

Krauss said he is not a big advocate of delivery via drones. “I think the automotive industry will be more effective to that end,” he said, adding that the thought of swarms of drones flying packages contrasts with the trend of cities getting greener and quieter. “But I do believe we are going to see drones flying in cities sooner than we are going to see the autonomous car.”

The biggest challenge for drone use, Krauss said, is not the technology, but public acceptance. For that reason, the first application Airobotics is aiming for in cities is emergency response: for example, drones that will send videos of a fire to the fire trucks before they arrive on location. “Similar to the case where people accept an ambulance driving through a red light,” Krauss said.

From there, it will be easier to transition into other applications, he said.