Hélipse HE300
Three unmanned helicopters were shipped to Japan on a special Nippon Airways flight from France yesterday to monitor the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The €40,000 order was received by Hélipse’s American partner, Rotomotion, from General Electric, mandated by the Japanese.
Company founder Laurent Grenier will be on hand to personally adjust and supervise the flights. He’ll be taking two electric and one petrol engine aircraft. Each is capable of up to one hour flight time with a range of 30 kilometers on autopilot.
The helicopters are all equipped with radiation sensors, infrared thermometers and cameras. The largest, the HE300 model has a large-load carrying capacity of greater than 20 kg. It was designed to run specific kinds of missions, including those requiring items such as a photographic camera, a cooled thermal camera, various types of sensors for measuring and/or surveying work or a tank for spraying etc..
The company was created in 2001 by Grenier, a model aircraft enthusiast who started out by adding a camera to one of his models to help out some friends working in the cinema industry. It now has four employees and has worked for some large names in France: Vinci, Saint-Gobain, Saft and the EDF.
Source: Sud Ouest France