Last week at Caesars Forum in Las Vegas, Commercial UAV Expo brought together industry professionals, thought leaders, and top companies from throughout the commercial drone sector for a conference and exhibition. At Commercial UAV News, we spent much of that week covering a bit of the conference program, featuring both presentations and panel discussions touching on some of the most interesting projects and impactful issues felt in the industry. 

In addition to attending sessions and learning from this conference programming, however, our staff also spent much of the week walking around the exhibit hall floor and talking with a handful of exhibitors at the event. While we certainly couldn’t speak with all 230 exhibiting organizations, we tried to get a nice cross-section of the floor. Below are highlights from a few of these conversations, with more to come later in the week.

Ascent AeroSystems

One of the most noticeable booths when walking onto the Commercial UAV Expo floor was that of Ascent Aerosystems, which had a few products to show off this year. First and foremost, they had just recently announced that their Spirit platform had joined the Blue UAS Framework. This was a significant announcement within the industry, as it became the first and only drone system cleared at both the component and system levels. Sticking with Blue UAS approvals, Ascent also announced the integration of Freefly Systems’ Pilot Pro ground control system with their platforms, giving users the opportunity to “go blue” from the ground up. 

Separate from these announcements, Ascent indicated that users from across various sectors were interested in these drones. In particular, their Helius system, which was announced in March and is on track to be released by the end of the year, received a lot of interest. They attributed much of this interest to the BVLOS NPRM, as the 249g Helius is perfect for BVLOS operations in public safety and emergency response scenarios.

Lidar USA

Of course, the Commercial UAV Expo floor does not only include drone manufacturers themselves, but also those who provide payloads and other critical components for creating value in drone operations. Lidar USA is one of those providers that, as their name suggests, produces lidar systems for drone operations. As they explained at their booth, they also provide lidar systems for land-based collection. Representatives noted that their biggest push for this year’s event was building awareness that their lidar systems are NDAA-compliant, and all made in the U.S. 

RIEGL

Sticking with lidar systems, RIEGL provides an interesting perspective on the evolution of Commercial UAV Expo as a long-time exhibitor. Even with that long-established presence, though, they continue to iterate and bring new products to showcase. This year, that was the new VUX-100, which provides a large field of view of 160 degrees within a lightweight aerial scanner. Along with this hardware, they also showed off their RiLOC line of products for location and orientation components – providing a full system of orientation and laser scanning made in-house – along with their RiPROCESS and RiPRECISION software systems.