NextIn Business: Swiss Drones – Flying Robots Transform Industrial Inspection and Emergency Response

Where humans cannot safely reach, such as in burning buildings, on collapsed structures, or atop windswept industrial towers, Swiss drones are redefining what is possible. Switzerland has emerged as a global leader in drone technology, with its ecosystem producing flying robots that not only observe but physically interact with their environment.

The “NextIn Business” series, supported by Deep Tech Nation Switzerland and the Gebert Rüf Stiftung, showcases this innovation in an episode titled “Helpers from the air“. The Swiss drone ecosystem traces its roots to research laboratories, particularly at EPFL in Lausanne, where the first quadcopters were launched. Roland Siegwart, an ETH professor and drone pioneer, describes how this sparked a wave of innovation. “We have drones that can interact in the air,” he explains. “They don’t fly as far away from buildings as possible, but go to a silo tower and can take measurements there to see if the steel is still in good condition”.

This ability to “fly and touch” defines Switzerland’s competitive advantage. Voliro, an ETH Zurich spin-off supported by Wyss Zurich, exemplifies this approach. As highlighted in the episode, Voliro’s drones inspect industrial facilities, wind turbines, and energy infrastructure. The company targets key markets in North America, Australia, and Brazil and is developing prototypes capable of not just inspection but manipulation and repair. This technology has attracted significant investment, including a $12 million Series A funding round to scale its operations globally.

Switzerland’s drone innovation extends to the most extreme environments. FireDrone, co-founded by Fabian Wiesemüller, has developed a drone that can be “used in a burning fire”. This technology, which made headlines even before the company’s founding, enables firefighters to fly into burning houses to find missing persons or conduct high-temperature inspections in steel mills and cement plants.

For disaster response requiring long-distance transport, Dufour Aerospace, led by CEO Sascha Hardegger, developed tilt-wing technology that turns drones into small airplanes after vertical takeoff. This system is designed to “transform logistics” by delivering critical cargo and equipment to disaster areas where roads are impassable.

Thomas Zurbuchen, the former NASA Science Director who now leads ETH Zurich’s unique Geolab, explains the country’s unique “locational advantage.” “We are small,” he states. “This means we can do things that no one else can. For example, we can focus on an entire mountain and fly drones over it”. The Geolab combines data from drones, satellites, and ground sensors to better predict natural disasters. Switzerland’s compact geography, combined with its concentrated computing power and research expertise, creates an ideal testbed. “We can bring it all together… where we then not only solve problems here, but scale them across the whole world,” Zurbuchen says.

While military applications dominate headlines elsewhere, Swiss companies have carved a powerful niche in civilian use, including agriculture and disaster response. This strategic focus is backed by a robust financial ecosystem, with approximately 60 percent of Swiss venture capital flowing into deep tech startups. From EPFL labs to global industrial sites, Swiss drones demonstrate how concentrated expertise can solve critical, real-world problems.