A market leader in civilian drones joins senseFly and Pix4D

The French company Parrot, world leader in wireless peripherals for mobile phones and already in the market for consumer drones, acquired for 5 million Swiss Francs a majority share in senseFly, a start-up from the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL. They will also invest 2.4 million Francs in Pix4D, another EPFL spin-off active in the field of 3D image processing. Mapping a construction site, landscape, cityscape or mine, monitoring industrial sites, managing agricultural land. The drone developed by senseFly, the result of 6 years of research in the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL, facilitates the work of experts across various fields. Equipped with an autopilot and a miniature high-definition camera, it is used by hundreds of professionals worldwide. This start-up installed at the gates of EPFL hopes to increase its sales tenfold in the next years and create dozens of new jobs in the field of airborne drones. It does so thanks to an investment of 5 million Swiss Francs from the publicly traded French company Parrot, making them a majority shareholder in senseFly.