The Slovenian drone impressed the Red Dot jury

Red Dot, a well-known international competition for product design, awarded them the Red Dot: Best of the Best award, which is considered the Oscar of the Red Dot awards. It was earned by the SQA eVTOL unmanned aerial vehicle, which is used for surveillance during natural disasters, searching for missing persons, monitoring and optimizing agricultural processes, geodesy, gas pipeline monitoring, border protection, reconnaissance and many other scenarios.

"In the last ten years, drones have made tremendous progress. However, they are most often associated with military use, which overshadows their practical use for civilian purposes. This is also our starting point in the development of new, innovative aircraft with a modular design that allows them to be used for various purposes," he said upon receiving the award. Nejc Trošt, co-founder of C-Astral and lead designer of the award-winning SQA eVTOL aircraft.

"It is a very complex high-tech product consisting of more than 400 components. The most advanced ultralight materials and electronic components used in the aerospace industry are used in the production of the product. If we manage to make such a technologically complex system user-friendly, with a design that has good aerodynamic efficiency, success is guaranteed. Basic training for operating our system can take only a few hours, which makes our aircraft unique," explains Trošt.

Slovenian knowledge, Slovenian components

Composite materials, electronic circuits, control software... 398 out of 400 components are manufactured in Slovenia, either in-house or in cooperation with Slovenian partners. The other two components will arrive on Slovenian production lines within a year.

"Our production facility is more like a laboratory than a technical workshop. Within a year, we will assemble various drone systems from our components or components from Slovenian manufacturers. We are talking about the 100-% domestic production of the most advanced drones," emphasizes Samo Stopar, co-founder and head of applied development at C-Astral.

What is the SQA eVTOL UAV?

BRAMOR and ATLAS, the predecessors of the SQA eVTOL aircraft, have together logged more than 140,000 flight hours. That's 140,000 hours of data that C-Astral, along with development experience, was able to use to develop the award-winning SQA eVTOL.

The SQA eVTOL is an electric aircraft that can take off and land vertically (VTOL), with a BWB fuselage (Blended Wing Body), which means that the fuselage and wing are combined into one composite structure. This increased aerodynamic lift, reduced noise and drag during flight. With state-of-the-art avionics, a ground control station with a range of up to 40 km, easy operation, various sensors, precise navigation (GPS, LIDAR...) the SQA eVTOL is ready for almost any control task.