Today, we visited an airport and an industrial park, in relation to our Product Development education. Again, i’m impressed with the activities that the school has been putting on lately, like the company crawl in Svendborg. It was a great opportunity for networking (as in business/social and not wires), job/internship hunting and industrial insights.
The first stop was at HCA (Hans Chirstian Andersen) airport, located at 10 km outside Odense. We visited Unmanned Aircraft Systems Denmark, a small company which is publicly funded (at least for the moment).
Their mission/vision (yes, i know they differ) is to facilitate the development, research and testing of unmanned aircraft systems. In other words (as in the commercial UAS that are being used nowadays) quadrocopters and drones.
The presentation was pretty clear, exhibiting the multiple areas where UAS can be used – ranging from entertainment purposes, commercial innovation (Amazons Prime Air programme) to emergency situations( the Copenhagen Fire Brigade are already using drones in their situations) and military conflict. Technically speaking there also multiple ways to innovate and use such a drone, like the file-sharing drones.
One of the main problems is that this unmanned aircraft field is relatively new and doesn’t have a clear legislation at a higher administrative level. There are also various privacy, security and technical concerns like:
- cross border flight
- the ability to fly above/inside private property
- not having a reserved area of the RF spectrum to operate in,
- not having a “secure” way to remote control (i doubt that encryption is implemented so far in the remote controls for drones)
This is a relatively new field of development and it’s sure to grow exponentially in the next years, create workplaces and improving many commercial and non-commercials areas. Another interesting thing is that students are welcomed to the airport for development and testing purposes. Some of my classmates working with drones already did that and made some test-flights.
Fyns Maritime Klynge (cluster)
The second stop was at Lindo Industrial Park an industrial area of over 1 milion m2 with huge expansion potential. The park is owned by Odense Harbour which in term is administered by the local government. It houses about 75 tenants (as in companies) and has the facilities for over 5000 people. The main activities here are ship maintenance/repair and assembly of wind turbines.
We had a presentation about the park and another one for the Maritime Cluster, which gathers about 81 companies, including educational and governmental institutions. The most interesting part related to this Cluster is the fact that they facilitating the creation of new master programmes. Gathering so many companies, this organization is a sure thing for students with different backgrounds to have big chances of working in their field of study.
After the presentation we had a short shipyard visit. I can tell that this was the place for big industrial machinery like heavy load transporters, cranes and assembly facilities like warehouses with indoor cranes and a drydock. The most impressive of them all was the Gantry Crane, the biggest in the Northern Europe. We managed to see it moving and i also got it on camera. Check the video below:
It was an interesting experience and we (the Product Development class) have enjoyed it. Looking forward for the next visit!