A little more than a month ago, a news item circulating in the media and social networks came as a surprise: Cuban entrepreneurs had manufactured and launched drones in the shape of a sparrowhawk.
Those responsible for the sudden appearance of bird-like drones in our skies are the guys from AlaSoluciones, an initiative focused on the development of unmanned aerial vehicles for industry and services.
Four friends founded this project in 2017, but today eight people with different backgrounds are working on it: mechanical engineers, computer scientists, agronomists and technicians, but all aeromodellers.
One of them is Erick Carmona Padrón, head of the team, who explains that a lot of electronics and programming comes into play in terms of the technology they use in their drones, but also ingenuity, hours of dedication and study, to keep up with the latest advances in the field worldwide.
Erick and his team work with practically any solution that includes technology for its execution, although their main project is the drones, developed together with the Scientific-Technological Park of Havana, with whom they are also working on the creation of a possible technology-based enterprise.
AlasSoluciones has developed 4 main prototypes: a multipurpose aircraft called Sky Walker, which is used for mapping work; a multi-functional drone to test the algorithms and control systems created by the team; an aquatic surface drone specially designed for the work of depth measurement in Cuban reservoirs, to calculate the real volumes of water they hold.
The fourth is the robotic falconry system, which has attracted attention on social media, as it imitates the shape and sound of a sparrowhawk, and is designed to scare away birds in places where it is needed, for example at airports, or from crops such as rice, where they can wreak havoc. This drone makes it possible to drive birds away from these places without killing or harming them.
“The hawk-shaped drones came about because the Cuban Airport and Aeronautics Services Enterprise did not have its own model aircraft, but instead rented them from Spanish companies, and it was necessary to replace this import of services,” Erick notes.
This hawk is a fully automatic drone, of which 3 prototypes have been made, and it also has the merit of being the first Cuban aircraft to land automatically.
While three decades ago academics and researchers in Cuba could only dream of designing robots, today the island has its own drones.
