Latvia’s AirDog: Man’s best drone friend

Jumping off a mountain cliff and landing in deep powder snow; filmed and chased at high-speed by a purple and yellow drone.
That may not sound like everyone’s cup of tea. And the spectre of a multi-coloured drone in pursuit adds a dose of surreal dystopian terror for the adrenal glands to cope with.

Yet for a keen snowboarder using AirDog — a Latvian-made “quadri-copter” drone engineered to auto-follow and film action sports at a fixed distance — it could be the difference between capturing the perfect footage of an inspired stunt, or having to make do with clumsy images from a GoPro Helmet, a shivering friend, or a wobbly selfie stick.
“I like the positive surprise on people’s faces,” says Janis Spogis, a co-founder at AirDog, having just taken his own auto-following AirDog for a stroll.

The surprise is not just that AirDog hovers, films, and follows automatically with the loyalty of a prized pooch; it’s also that it was designed in the small Baltic nation of Latvia, a country with a population of less than 2 million, one of the lowest GDPs per capita in the EU, and with mountains that barely stretch higher than 300 metres. Nevertheless, Latvia is home to a small but thriving action sports scene and an increasingly sophisticated nexus of innovative engineering.

The team of 10 engineers behind AirDog is spearheaded by CEO Edgars Rozentals, who founded the umbrella company Helico Aerospace Industries in June 2012 initially to research and develop more generic corporate uses for drones.  
However, emerging from the Labs of Latvia, an EU-backed incubator for young companies, they quickly started applying their drone making skills to the pursuit and perfection of their own action sport hobbies.

“Without incubator EU funds, we wouldn’t be here,” says Spogis. He notes how strong ties with Riga Technical University, where there is a flourishing robotics unit, also helped to get the project off the ground.
But he stresses the project only really motored ahead in 2014, when they launched what turned out to be the largest Kickstarter campaign that has ever taken place in Latvia, bringing in over 1.3 million dollars in start up funds.
Angel investors have since glided in to top up that funding, and manufacturing and distribution have gotten underway, with the first products now on their way to market. Sales look promising after the team won last year’s “Best Drone or Robot Award” at the glitzy Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“2015 was a great year,” smiles Spogis, though some comments on the AirDog Facebook feed point to delays in production when it comes to getting complimentary AirDogs to some of their Kickstarter backers.
As he folds up his AirDog again and stows it in his backpack, he explains the fusion of technologies that have made it practical for extreme sports.

At its core is a LIDAR distance tracker and a long range bluetooth connection between the AirDog and an Airleash, a wrist strap worn by the user, which means all the user needs to do to fly it is to preset a distance of up to 250 metres the AirDog keeps from its user, with the drone auto-adjusting the height, speed, and direction of its flightpath to keep the owner in shot.

Rival models such as PlexiDrone, EHANG (Ghost), and 3D Robotics’ Iris+ have gone down a different route of using purely GPS capabilities, but the engineers at AirDog found GPS alone to be too limited for extreme sports use for now.
According to the AirDog team, their drone is also a sturdy beast: waterproof for surfers and water skiers, well able to withstand altitudes up to 3,500 metres, chills of down to minus 10 degrees Celsius, and heats of up to 40C, all alongside winds of up to 28 knots. In less tempestuous conditions, it can reach speeds of up to 60 kilometres per hour to keep up with anything from ski mobiles in Patagonia to dirt bikes in the Sahara.

The team are reaching out to Olympic athletes looking to fine-tune their techniques with high quality video recordings.
But an incident right at the end of last year could stymie momentum for drone makers like AirDog. On Dec. 23, a drone filming a slalom ski race in Italy veered into a no-fly zone and plummeted from the sky, crashing and shattering onto the slalom course in the middle of the race — barely a metre behind Marcel Hirscher, the downhill skiing world champion.
Hirscher skied on unscathed. But the incident caused the International Ski Federation (FSI) to raise a red flag. “Clearly we tried it in this case, and we had numerous safety measures in place that we were assured would be met,” says Jenny Wiedeke, a spokesman for the FSI, noting that drones were traditionally used for pre-course coverage and beauty shots far from where they could fall into the crowd.

“Looking ahead to the future, we won’t be using drones until the safety of our athletes and spectators can be guaranteed,” she tells The Baltic Times by phone from the FSI’s HQ in Bern, Switzerland. “So the technology has to continue to improve.”  
It is not just on the ski slopes that regulators are starting to look into the challenges and opportunities presented by the increasing quantity and sophistication of drones zipping through European skies.

“Accidents will happen,” reads the Riga Declaration, a set of basic principles laid down during Latvia’s EU Council presidency which form a starting point for EU-wide regulations that are still at the foetal stage.
Last month, the European Commission unveiled its new Aviation Strategy for Europe, and it was quick to recognise the current regulatory frame was not fit for purpose: “The existing rules do not reflect well the needs of this newly emerging technology,” reads the accompanying impact assessment released Dec. 7.

“Today’s aviation safety rules are not adapted to drones,” another communique released the same day points out. “Given the broad variety of types of drones being used under very differing operation conditions, a risk based framework needs to be put in place rapidly.”

Maris Gorodcovs, Director of Latvian Civil Aviation Agency, who chaired an EU summit on drones back in March last year, the first high level meeting of its kind, shares this sense of urgency. Companies “need uniform regulation across the whole of the EU,” he tells The Baltic Times, “because that’s the only opportunity for European companies to develop and to sell their products abroad. If it remains fragmented from one country to another, it’s not possible.”

“The private sector demands one regulation for all,” he adds. “The freedom to fly to other countries and operate in other countries in the same manner as in their home country.”
But according to the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA), tough questions will slow down progress: should all drones should be registered with equivalents of EU number plates, wonders spokesman Ilias Maragakis. “You’re talking about millions of drones here,” he says, arguing that there would be much to do by way of catching up.
“I’m afraid no one has the exact numbers of these drones being sold in Europe, because nobody’s required to report them,” he adds.

Furthermore, he notes that questions surrounding the appropriate means to uphold privacy concerns and protect data, or how to enforce no-fly zones over crowded urban areas such as airports or power plants will also slow down the advance of an EU-wide regulatory frame, causing a legal headache for EU member states, insurers, and law enforcers in years to come.

The commission also eyes numerous opportunities for job creation for the manufacture and regulation of drones, particularly among SMEs.
However, those making drones for “civilian” or even corporate purposes such as agriculture, deliveries, or construction are concerned about losing out to larger drone makers who are building their drones for military purposes.

“Our understanding is that funding gets allocated to larger military applications because these companies have experience on how to get EU funds,” says Timothy van Langeveld, aerospace legal counsel for Aerialtronics, a drone making company based in the Netherlands. “Most small and medium-sized enterprises may not even know that funds are available let alone how to get them. What is required for the commercial sector is clarity on how to get this funding and what is required to qualify.”

“There has been a lot of talking on all levels,” he says, “but at the moment this has not resulted in a drone ecosystem in Europe that is able to sustain itself. Although on paper all support is given, that support still has to find its way into the sector.”

As for the team of AirDog, they seem fairly unaware about where to look for new EU funds, and as for regulations, for now they broadly suggest avoiding crowded public spaces and busy ski slopes when using their product.

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