| Company | Flyability |
| Country | Switzerland |
| Website | https://www.flyability.com/elios-3 |
| Category | Planning & Inventory › Remote sensing & mapping |
Commercial collision-tolerant drone for confined space inspection, deployed in forestry for rapid tree scanning to assess size, value, and health in managed forests.
The Flyability Elios 3 is a collision-tolerant indoor drone developed by Swiss robotics company Flyability, designed specifically for inspecting confined, GPS-denied, and hazardous environments where conventional drones cannot safely operate. The aircraft is encased in a protective carbon-fibre cage that absorbs impacts with walls, beams, and machinery, allowing it to navigate tight spaces without crashing. The Elios 3 is equipped with a 4K visual camera, a 47-megapixel still camera, and an integrated Intel RealSense LiDAR depth sensor that enables the drone to build dense 3D point clouds of interior spaces in real time using Flyability's Inspector 4.0 software suite. In forestry and timber processing contexts, the Elios 3 has relevant applications in the inspection of large industrial infrastructure including sawmill interiors, kiln chambers, storage silos, biomass processing facilities, and pulp and paper plant structures — environments that are hazardous for workers and expensive to shut down for routine inspection. The drone can identify structural defects, corrosion, blockages, and fire risks inside enclosed timber processing equipment without requiring scaffolding, confined-space entry permits, or facility downtime. In Australian plantation and forest products operations, where workplace health and safety compliance is stringent, the Elios 3 represents a significant improvement over manual inspection methods. Its LiDAR-generated 3D models also support digital twin development for asset management. Since its commercial release in 2022, the Elios 3 has been adopted in mining, energy, and industrial sectors globally, and its capabilities are increasingly recognised by forest industry asset managers seeking to reduce inspection costs and improve worker safety across remote and complex processing infrastructure.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Company | Flyability |
| Country | Switzerland |
| Type | Company |
| FWPA RD&E | 7.4 |