An Important Feature of ArroTech’s GEON E61 Drone is Its Ease of Operation 

Efforts to rid nations including Ukraine of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) have until now relied upon slow, dangerous and literally pedestrian methods. 

At considerable risk to themselves, people have worked to locate mines and UXO with handheld and cart-mounted metal detectors. Today, a high-tech alternative to that approach is at hand with the development of ArroTech’s GEON E61 metal-detecting drone. 

Despite its sophistication, the drone is easy to use, a characteristic that was important to its principal architect, ArroTech chief technical officer Tobias Leininger. 

Europe-based Leininger and members of the GEON E61 development and prototyping team located at TechFarms in Panama City Beach, Florida, have worked hard to make operation of the autonomous drone in the field simple. 

People who’ve never seen a drone can come in here, grab a tablet and draw an area on a map,” Leininger explained. “The drone will autonomously fly over that area in overlapping passes to ensure full coverage.” High-precision RTK GNSS and ground-facing sensors are used to keep the drone on track and allow it to follow ground contours within centimeters.

The brain of the system is a unique Ground Control Station designed and developed specifically for this system. All threads come together there. The custom software controls everything from the drone’s flight to mission data analysis.

“The user’s interaction with the drone is minimal,” team member Kurt Morris added. “The drone flies itself. Manual flight is risky. Let the computer handle it.