DroneOps

The problem

Agricultural drone service operators across Europe struggle to manage pilot certifications, drone registrations, insurance policies, and national derogation permits as these expire on different schedules. Managing multiple documents across team members and tracking them manually creates compliance risks and operational delays. When regulators inspect permits and flight records, many operators cannot quickly produce evidence of authorization. As the business grows and adds pilots, drones, and customers, spreadsheet-based tracking becomes error-prone and unauditability becomes a liability. Customers increasingly demand documented proof of safe, authorized applications, and regulators require operators to demonstrate that every flight met permit conditions.

The product

DroneOps is operations software that brings together mission planning, pilot and equipment compliance management, flight record tracking, and invoicing into a single platform. The system lets operations managers import field boundaries and schedule jobs across their team while automatically tracking pilot certifications, drone registrations, insurance, and national permits with expiration alerts. Pilots plan missions with specific parameters, import flight logs directly from drone platforms, and the system maintains detailed records tied to each job. For spraying work authorized under national derogations, the system logs product type, dose, treated area, and weather for each flight. An integrated invoicing module calculates costs per hectare and generates compliant invoices ready for accounting systems. Mapping outputs including prescription maps are organized in multiple vendor formats to work with existing geospatial tools.

Problems it solves

• Drone service operators struggle to keep accurate, current records of pilot licences, equipment registrations, and insurance policies as expiry dates approach.
• Managing national derogation permits for drone spraying is complex and involves multiple documents that must be tracked, updated, and presented to regulators.
• Service providers need to produce accurate application and flight records on demand for both customer verification and regulatory inspections, a task made harder by manual tracking.
• Calculating costs and generating invoices for each job is done manually, leading to errors, delays, and difficulty tracking profitability across multiple pilots and sites.

Standards it follows

• EU Directive 2009/128/EC Article 9 prohibits aerial application including drones in principle, but allows national derogations. The Commission's proposed Article 9a and Council position for 2026 continue to evolve, creating ongoing regulatory uncertainty.