Country: Spain

Category: Space

Project aim: Fuvex wants to find a solution to:

• Search and rescue in high seas where all the migrant crisis is happening in the Mediterranean Sea.
• Forest fires that consume every year the nature of Southern Europe.
• Marine pollution that is devastating the fauna of the oceans.

What are the instruments we can use to solve these problems?

Helicopters play a key role to solve these situations monitoring the area affected and providing critical data from the sky. However, helicopters are expensive (up to 7,5 M€ cost of acquisition and 3.000 €/hour of operation), complex and even dangerous tools, with 9 serious accidents only in Spain every year. Drones can disrupt emergencies and critical missions saving more than 78% costs without any personal risks.

Can drones be used in any situation?

Nevertheless, drones are not replacing helicopters due to two requirements that must be meet simultaneously:

-Legal issues: Long range operations are already permitted in most EU countries. However, in order to perform long range operations (Beyond Visual Line Of Sight) regularly, systems and procedures must be developed to bring trust into the technology.

-Aircraft Characteristics: Drones must be capable of fulfilling the missions presently carried out by helicopters. This means easy deployment and operation from any place and long flight range.

What do we do?

We are developing solutions to meet these requirements: a hybrid plane/multirotor aircraft with Vertical Take-Off and Landing from any flat surface that has double endurance than normal drones thanks to its plane cruise. In addition, we are co-creating the systems and procedures required to fly legally with key corporations being supervised by Spanish Authorities.

Who are we?

We are a team composed by 13 members, 4 of them are working full time. We are Professors, Ph.Ds, MBAs, an executive of an IBEX35 Corporation, engineers, etc. We started our project in 2013 and founded the company in 2015 after being selected by the Orizont Accelerator. We have signed a contract with the reference Spanish corporation in its segment to begin the implementation of our technology in their processes in emergency services and we are preparing two MoUs with two additional key institutions. We have raised more than 0,5 M€ and received an H2020 SME Phase I (14.04/15). We are spin-off of the Public University of Navarre and have an international patent.