During 2024, former Drone Center Sweden with more than 10 years of experience of drones and founder of UAS Forum Sweden (Sweden’s oldest and largest drone conference), was incorporated into Västervik Drone Science Park (VDSP).
The reorganization’s aim is to secure continued development, broaden and scale up operations. With the goal of contributing even more to strengthening R/D, innovation within unmanned technology (in air, land and water) and the drone industry at large. VDSP is foundation owned business-driven non-profit, where any surplus is reinvested in the business.
Drones can be used within various areas, including agriculture, aquaculture and forestry as well as infrastructure and urban planning. At VDSP, unmanned vehicles are tested and demonstrated in a realworld environment and setting.
The testbed is one of Europe’s largest and consists of 1 800 km2 geo-zon (R-area) and offers all Nordic terrain types (Land, forest, archipelago, open sea, lakes, etc ) except subarctic high alpine. There is also all possible infrastructure that can be used with approval e.g. power lines, windmills, railways, roads, etc. Västervik airport is the base for the UAS/UAV part of the drone testbed.
Over the years many different projects have been carried out e.g. drones navigating under the tree canopy to collect data on the position and quality of the trees, wildlife inventory, water sampling as well as monitoring systems of algae and other maritime conditions in the sea.
Since 2018 the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) has been in Västervik for their practical research tests of autonomous systems on land, at sea and in the air. The European agricultural project AFarCloud has been testing drones and sensors for monitoring agriculture and husbandry as developing AI based Decision Support Tools for farming. Several producers of unmanned fixed-wing, helicopters and multi-copters (the biggest 5×5 m and payload up to 1 000 kg) have been testing or carrying out demonstrations in Västervik.
Contact:
Richard Granberg, CEO
richard.granberg@vastervikdsp.com
+46 708 30 65 50
Urban Wahlberg, Senior Advisor Aero/UAS and Technical Manager
urban.wahlberg@vastervikdsp.com
+46 70 994 14 54
Åke Sivertun, Senior Professor, RISE Research Institutes
ake.sivertun@ri.se
+46 70 791 89 22