"Sibiryak" (produced by Gaskar Group) drones have been used since mid-July to control illegal waste dumping from trucks in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The drones helped identify 10 offenders. This was reported by the press service of the regional government.
During flights, the drone operator records violations from the air in real time. The collected materials are transferred to the regional Ministry of Ecology for drawing up an administrative offense report.
Pavel Dreiger, Executive Director of Gaskar Group, said that thanks to its 160x optical zoom, "Sibiryak" identifies dump trucks with waste from a distance of 1 kilometer. The drone operator receives the exact coordinates of the offender, he added.
Characteristics of the "Sibiryak" UAV:
- Flight range — 17 km
- Speed — 72 km/h
- Maximum flight duration — 1 h
- Payload mass — 4 kg
- Maximum flight altitude — 1000 m
- Operating altitude — 500 m
- Takeoff/landing — vertical
The built-in thermal imager helps the drone "see" at night, during heavy rain and snowfall. Gaskar Group's development is highly autonomous: when the signal is suppressed, the drone switches to visual odometry (a method for estimating the position and orientation of an object moving in space relative to a starting point using data on its own movements). As a result, the device independently maintains altitude and returns to the starting point.
In 2024, an experimental legal regime for the operation of drones in the civilian sector was introduced in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The operator of the EPR for UAVs in the region is ANO "Gorky Tech".