What’s the innovation?
Focusing on the growing commercial drone market, Patrick’s mission is to develop this technology further, selling and licencing out to companies innovating in three key sectors, Agriculture, Energy and the Emergency Services. Patrick’s initial reasons for engaging were to find funding opportunities and to network in the Cornish business sector.
Through some of the initial contacts Patrick made through ATI, he was able to secure some funding for prototype manufacture from Agri-Tech Cornwall. This is currently still underway but Patrick is hopeful that this will be completed by the end of the year. Although he can’t disclose much information due to IP protection, Patrick says that development is going well and the business is learning a lot throughout the process. He found ATI2 via a Google search while trying to find business support for Cornish start-up businesses. As a pre-prototype start up the main challenge was finding funding and financing the necessary R&D work.
What business support have they received?
Patrick received over 12 hours of one to one business consultancy. This included 6 hours of funded academic consultancy, allowing one to one time with a relevant academic from the University of Plymouth and 6 hours of external consultancy which supported the submission of a provisional patent application. The consultancy element of ATI2 came as a surprise to Patrick, who found this aspect of support the most useful. He said, “It allowed me to pursue IP protection early on when funding would otherwise not have allowed me to.”