Drones are an efficient, flexible digital technology that can perform increasingly complex tasks without damaging the environment, however their widespread adoption across the agri-food sector has been limited by costs, knowledge gaps, regulatory and safety restrictions.
ICAERUS aims to tackle these challenges by supporting and showcasing the effective, efficient, and safe deployment of drones in applicable settings and to identify risks and added values associated with their use. This will be done by using 5 specific drone applications in Use Cases representing the most important sectoral and societal drone usage purposes in Europe. ICAERUS will also produce several exploitable results that will offer extensive positive impact including the ICAERUS platfrom.
ICAERUS aims to tackle these challenges by supporting and showcasing the effective, efficient, and safe deployment of drones in applicable settings and to identify risks and added values associated with their use. ICAERUS’ vision is to explore opportunities for drones and provide a complete, interconnected account of their potential and impact as multi-purpose vehicles in EU agriculture, forestry, and rural areas. ICAERUS will utilize an application-oriented approach to explore multi-purpose drone use in 5 specific drone applications, representing the most important sectoral and societal drone usage purposes in Europe. ICAERUS also plans to use research, technology optimization, demonstration, and drone education to create an efficient, trusted, and safe environment for the EU drone service market to flourish contributing to the achievement of the EU’s decarbonization, digitalization and resilience.
The ICAERUS platform is essentially a one-stop web-based platform for drone related information. Stakeholders will have access to information on actors, needs and innovations, standards, regulations, and risks; drone data analytics models; advancements, outcomes, and socio-economic and environmental impact assessment results of drone applications; inclusive business and governance models; and an open-access capacity building programme. The value that this platform brings is the access all of ICAERUS’ application-oriented outputs and links to other projects in one place and it addresses multiple sectors such as researchers, the private sector, non-profits etc.