Birdview

Birdview builds the Seabird, a multirotor UAV that carries a Kongsberg Simrad EK80 split-beam echosounder and is launched from and recovered to a moving vessel deck using RTK-GNSS positioning. The drone flies the sonar up to fifteen nautical miles from the hull to find fish schools and classifies species and size before a net is set. The payload can be swapped to a camera and thermal sensor for surveillance and inspection.

The main application is pelagic fisheries in Norway, Iceland and Denmark. The website also describes surveillance and offshore wind turbine inspection, and plans to extend the same airframe to tropical tuna purse seiners by replacing the echosounder with camera and thermal payloads.

Birdview AS was founded in 2015 and is based at Oslo Science Park in Oslo, Norway. The company also lists a Birdview Inc office in Lewes, Delaware, USA. It holds granted patent EP 3917826 and has a PCT application pending, and its research work is listed as involving SINTEF and Horizon EU CHIPS JU projects.

Product: Seabird: a UAV with a swappable payload (Kongsberg Simrad EK80 echosounder, camera or thermal) and autonomous RTK-GNSS launch and recovery from a moving deck.