Dutch fire department announces purchase of Altura
Tuesday, July 15th 2014 – The Dutch fire department of Twente have today announced their purchase of an Altura unmanned aircraft system from Aerialtronics. Following their purchase the fire department have completed training, obtained all the required permits and attained the necessary certificates in the last couple of months.
The Twente fire department will now start with an initial trial phase, the results of which will be used to determine the added value of unmanned systems for fire departments in the Netherlands. Based on these findings the Minister of Security and Justice, Mr Ivo Opstelten, will decide whether other fire departments in the Netherlands could follow suit.
The Twente fire department expect to improve their operations by employing the Altura to explore fire grounds from above, assessing the origin of the fire with thermal imagery and composing an action plan based on aerial overviews. Additionally, the unmanned system could be used pro-actively by mapping hazardous sites to set an emergency plan in place. Furthermore, the Altura can also carry other sensors like a sniffer, which enables unmanned evaluation of toxin levels in the sky.
The fire department have purchased a basic Altura ATX8 set, consisting of an 8 motor system with a standard 868 Mhz- 2.4 Ghz diversity receiver, which was supplemented by a camera control premium upgrade and an Altura Dupla Vista camera box equipped with a daylight as well as thermal core.
The ATX8 is particularly suitable for safe, high intensity, emergency operations with large payloads due to its thoroughly tested failsafes and redundancy. Combined with the Dupla Vista camera box, this configuration allows the fire department to create aerial overviews with a daylight zoom core as well as a thermal camera in one flight. As a result, the rescue workers can acquire complete understanding of the premises within minutes. Moreover, the versatility of the Altura platform facilitates easy switching from camera payloads to sniffer payloads.
Aerialtronics will be working closely with the Twente fire department to assist in the use of their system, exploration of applications and possible innovation of novel payloads.
Aerialtronics is a leading international manufacturer of state of the art, high quality unmanned aircraft systems for civilian purposes. The company sells multirotor Alturas for a wide variety of applications in numerous countries worldwide. Aerialtronics’ systems are designed and developed in-house according to aviation grade quality standards making the Altura systems consistently reliable as well as stable. Aerialtronics defines the future of unmanned aircraft systems!
