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Last Monday, October 15, iHLS’s AUS&R conference hosted a plethora of startups, organizations and individuals from the industry of Unmanned Systems. A unique addition to the successful conference came all the way from Poland, who sent their representatives from the Polish Drone Industry Association (PDIA).

The Association’s chairman, physicist and a UAV expert Mr. Dariusz Werschner, shared with iHLS news desk his vision for the future of drones as well as Israel-Poland cooperation in the field.

The PDIA representative, who flew-in to the conference especially from overseas, sparked our interest. Mr. Werschner explained the importance of cooperation between Israel and Poland in the drone industry, with each side making its own important contribution to the field.

“From our perspective, Israel and the U.S. are the leaders of the unmanned technology. In Poland, we love those technologies: drones, UAVs, and our industry wants to cooperate with Israel. We, on the other hand, are the leaders of unmanned pilots; we have 8500 drone pilots,” he explains.

“Also, we have good regulation prepared. It will be implemented and working within one month. The regulations at hand enable us to fly in the cities with unmanned systems. We have many startups and companies but we need investors, and this is why we want to support your companies. We want to help Israel work with our capable engineers. This is a good field for mutual cooperation, and we think it is very possible.”

As the president of the PDIA, Mr. Werschner along with his team “prepare, with our Civil Aviation Authority, new legislation which allows our BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) operations and automatic procedure of flying.”

In regards to regulation, according to Mr. Werschner, “I want to cooperate with Israel. We are very close already, we already culturally cooperate, and this technological level could be a good field for cooperation between our two nations.”

Mr. Werschner emphasized the array of talented Polish engineers. He proceeded to tell us about a competition in Poland called the “Dronyada”, which has been active for 5 years, and in which over 500 young engineers participated.  

The problem, according to Mr. Werschner, is that “we still don’t have enough capital to grow fast as we want. This is why I want to invite all companies and investors to contact us and our association, and we will bridge between companies, startups and investors of the two nations.”

Lastly, we discussed drones in future societies, and asked Mr. Werschner for his input. “The dynamic of growth regarding this technology is huge. It is similar to the way smartphones used to be. Now we are starting a new chapter with this technology. Legislation is changing. We will be able to see drones inside cities,” he explains.

“‘Drones’ means drone-based autonomous systems, which provide us many services. This will be common for us. We start from life-saving deliveries. Drones will be as normal as smartphones. It will be part of our daily life, in our cities, outside and inside buildings, in every environment it will save our lives and support firefighters, rescue teams, security teams and a variety of civil services.”

For further inquiries with Mr. Dariusz Werschner and the Polish Drone Industry Association, please contact iHLS at [email protected]