Gianluca Salone
Founder and Executive Director of Drone Solutions
Our team has been interviewing various people in the drone space worldwide, and today we are proud to sit down with one of the most experienced drone experts in the town.
Meet Gianluca Salone (AKA Luca), Founder and Executive Director of Drone Solutions. His Singapore-based company operates in the expanding Unmanned System Industry market within the areas of Unmanned System Technologies via research and development.
In this interview, we talk in-depth with Gianluca on how he switched from the humanitarian sector to drone business, how his company got started, their bestsellers, the benefits of using drones to reduce pollution, advice for drone starters, and many more exciting things.
If you are into the industrial side of drones, this interview is something you should read right now as it covers all things related to Unmanned Systems in one place.
Let us dive in to see what Gianluca has to say for our questions!
Let’s Start the Interview
Welcome Gianluca, introduce yourself and how did you dive into the drone industry?
By birth, I am Italian; however, I consider myself to be an international citizen. By training, I am a professional engineer (Master of Science Degree in Water & Environmental Management) and have over 20 plus years of international managerial experience in the humanitarian sector having held positions of high responsibility at the United Nations, OXFAM, UNICEF, and the Red Cross.
My postings were in the most depressed and inhumane of areas, where the risk to my life was high and often imminent, including Cambodia, Laos, Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Somalia, Tanzania, Kenya, Chad, Pakistan, Dominica and St Lucia Islands, Haiti, Panama, Libya, Myanmar, and most recently in war-torn Sudan.
From this background of working in a state of constant despair, grew a vision and the definition of a line of aid and relief-oriented technologies and products which can be delivered by unmanned vehicles, which is the genesis for my company Drone Solutions.
Tell us about the Drone Solutions, what it is, and your services there?
Drone Solutions is a Singapore based privately held company involved in designing, researching, manufacturing, developing, selling, marketing, patenting, and licensing proprietary Intellectual property rights concerning to Unmanned Systems Tech items.
We are in continuous pursuit of brilliance through novelty and technological innovation allowing it to offer advanced and bespoke state-of-the-art aerial vehicle systems (“UAS”), unmanned underwater vehicles (“UUV”), unmanned surface vehicles (“USV”), and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (“UGV”) products across a distinct range of sectors.
Tell us about some of the drone-oriented products you design and manufacture. What is your biggest seller?
We are currently developing surface and sub-surface underwater drone technology for application in Search and Rescue (“SAR”) situations, which we will be announcing.
Currently, our biggest seller is the WasteShark, followed by products that support USAR. We anticipate that the recently introduced Lifeseeker Mini which can be installed in any UAV will be of great interest to the police, fire department, civil defense, and search & rescue professionals which can be deployed to locate missing people using their mobile phones as beacons. It requires no cooperation from the service providers or missing persons and works even where there is no mobile telephone signal or network coverage.
Who are you covering? What types of industries/people have you found are most keen on Drone Solutions?
Drone Solutions, while servicing all energy, agroforestry, marine industries, and the public utilities, focuses on the Emergency and Relief sectors such as Unmanned SAR and Unmanned Environmental Protection.
Our clientele is primarily professional organizations, including NGOs and governmental agencies who require solutions to problems they face and do not have the expertise or resources to resolve them, especially as there are so many vendors each purporting to have the ultimate product and solution.
Ranmarine Technology appoints Drone Solutions, their South East Asian distributor. Awesome! How did you come up with that?
As we are always searching for innovative technologies, we continuously scan markets worldwide for new products that are not just unique but fulfill a need.
Once we identified that Ranmarine Technology’s WasteShark, we directly approached them and commenced a dialogue that ultimately led to the appointment.
Ranmarine Technology specializes in manufacturing drones called Sharks. What is so unique about these?
RanMarine first developed the use of ASV’s (waterborne robots) in the fight against pollution and water quality health management in 2016, at that time a world first.
Using ASV’s to help fight plastic pollution in water, reduce biomass, and other waste product while at the same time collecting data in water health quality of our waterways is unique to not only fight pollution but also enables us to learn more about our environment.
What makes them unique is that ASV’s can work around the clock fighting this scourge, either reducing the reliance on humans to do the job or offering them better, more efficient tools to reduce pollution.
What is the market for industrial drones right now? How has it transformed since you launched your business?
Before the COVID-19 Pandemic, the drone market on all fronts was booming, but since then has been depressed as many take a “wait and see” attitude.
As the market has accepted the potential of aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial drones to increase our capability and efficiency as industrial tools, we are finding that where they were seen as just “innovative and interesting” perhaps two years ago, we now see greater acceptance of them as actual useful and contributing industrial tools, often replacing current and past working methods.
On the whole, as industrial products, drones typically reduce operating costs and offer a more streamlined and efficient way of doing the job.
What are some of the benefits of using drones to fight against brainless water waste contamination?
The capability of a drone to do repetitive (robotic) work means that in the case of waste management, it needn’t be reactive.
But, it can now be used as a maintenance tool and proactively and continuously clean areas of waste build up in the water, which means that users can now focus on other areas requiring more attention.
The WasteShark which has both a manual operator mode for where labor is sufficiently available or can be deployed in autonomous mode in societies where labor is scarce or too expensive.
It offers a tool that is cost-effective and reliable, requiring limited human intervention; more so as it can collect data from the water at the same time provides civic institutions immediate and better knowledge about their waterscapes.
What are some of the most exciting uses of drone systems have you found people or companies using?
The usage of drone technology in the reduction of poaching is one area that I have been particularly interested in and support.
Its ability to track animals and poachers from the air in remote areas is perhaps one of the essential uses of aerial drone technology today.
Another area which is on the rise is the use of drones in the agricultural/gardening space, which leads to more predictive harvesting yields and also improved water distribution and fruit tree health as a result of persistent surveillance.
What are your thoughts on the future of automated drones for gathering data regarding the marine surroundings and extracting unnecessary materials?
We see the future as being very bright. Current methods focus on reactive measures to clean waterways; generally, we wait until there is enough visible trash to be seen before going and removing it. Using robots to do this means that there is never a chance for waste to build-up.
It means that the trash is collected before it gets a chance to sink to the bottom, start to degrade into microplastics, or float out into the greater ocean and pollute our oceans.
Gathering data will become increasingly more important. If a city or a port can understand what is in its waters, it can better fight the pollution problem, better predict issues such as hazardous algal blooms or potential ancillary challenges such as fish die-offs. All this leads to a healthier environment for humans, marine life, and the planet.
For a person or company that is considering unmanned systems technology, what advice do you have to find the right item?
Take time to understand. Know the limitations and the benefits of unmanned technology, and know that they do not 100% replace a person but rather improve the work of a person, make their job more secure, effective, and productive with less risk.
Looking at the problem and understand what technology can help rather than looking at the technology as the solution. Ask the advice of an expert who goes beyond selling a UST and rather sell a solution.
What are the potential risks of not researching the rules, especially if somebody is trying to fly a drone commercially?
Laws and regulations have been made to ensure the safety of all use, protect that personal liberties are not infringed upon, and also prevent the unnecessary loss of life.
The consequence of not complying with laws and regulations can be of “catastrophic.” Besides, monetary penalties and the loss of flight privileges liability associated with accidents can be financially crippling, leading to personal/company bankruptcy.
What advice will you have for others who want to start flying drones?
My first advice would be for you to ask yourself “why do I need to fly a drone”? UAV’s are readily available, and although they may look innocent and seem easy to operate they can be extremely dangerous if improperly used.
Before you decide to fly a drone, you need to understand your ability to do so and the benefit of doing so versus the risk that operating a drone has.
What advances in drones are you excited for?
Most of the drones which we market use 4G to communicate; we are quite excited about the introduction of the 5G spectrum in the coming few years.
It will lead to a reduction in latency with the speed of data transfer greatly enhancing drone products, their operation & management, and the information which they can gather, process, and assimilate.
Another area that excites me is the further integration of A.I. in drones which will take them to the next level of innovation especially in the USAR arena enabling more practical lifesaving efforts after large-scale calamities occur.
To conclude, how was the interview with us?
Thank you for taking the time out to speak with me and to discuss Drone Solutions and my vision; your questions were both pertinent and insightful.