InDro earns FAA BVLOS drone waiver for US solar farm inspection

Drone services and ground robotic vehicle specialist InDro Robotics has received a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) UAV flights in the US, a first for a Canadian company according to the Toronto-based firm.

InDro says it will initially use the FAA waiver to operate BVLOS drone missions for clients in the US solar energy sector, notably inspecting their often enormous assemblies of photovoltaic panels. During similar work for customers in Canada, the company’s UAVs – equipped with cameras and thermal sensors – scan infrastructure for broken, malfunction, or even merely dirty panes requiring intervention, immediately uploading that data to a cloud platform for analysis. 

Those aerial assessments are usually completed in a couple of hours by the end of a single day, compared to the far greater time needed for on-foot human checks.

Read: Indro Robotics opens cutting-edge drone test and…