Drones, which will protect the border with Turkey from the expected influx of refugees, were shown at the Robohitech exhibition during the 72nd International Technical Fair in Plovdiv, which opened on Monday. “One of these drones is capable of covering a distance of 100km, and a fleet of 5-6 drones are enough to cover the entire border with Turkey, which can be scanned by the aircraft every 2 hours.
If the downtime is reduced to 20 or 30 minutes, a larger number of drones will be needed, “revealed Professor Dimo Zafirov of the Space Research Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He expects to announce a public invitation to tender for order of high numbers of drones to guard the borders of Bulgaria. “This order will take about 5-6 months.”
“If the situation is urgent and a matter of days, it is possible to switch to a direct negotiation option. We can react instantly because we have available UAVs”, said Prof. Zafirov, who is in the leadership of the Bulgarian Drone Academy.
At the booth of the Bulgarian Drone Academy in Pavilion 10 of the Plovdiv Fair, the two models are displayed, the larger one with a wing width of 9.2 meters and the smaller one with 3 meters. “In early September, we received an unmanned airplane from Sweden worth 140 000 BGN and is designed to monitor the coastline on the territory of the Municipality of Burgas. It is programmed and performs the mission autonomously.
The ground management station allows you to set a flight in advance, plan, simulate and then execute”, said Professor Dimo Zafirov, working at the Space Research Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. On board of the UAVs are mounted cameras for surveillance and monitoring”.
Their prices range from 2-3 thousand BGN for the day modules up to 10-12 thousand BGN for multi-spectral and night vision thermal cameras. There are also radars with a three-dimensional image of the earth’s surface, but their price is in the order of 700 thousand leva. “We are in a position to fulfill every wish of the Border Police, after defining the ground control stations from which the drones will be managed, as well as the risky and the less risky areas”, says Prof. Dimo Zafirov, who is among the main organizers of the first edition of the Robohitech exhibition at the International Fair in Plovdiv.