Why this Japanese company is building ‘anti-overtime’ drones

Photo credit: Blue Innovation

This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with Disrupting Japan where we publish the revised transcripts from the show’s podcast interviews with Japanese entrepreneurs. This is heavily revised from the original transcripts. For the full interview, go here.

An idea I’ve talked about a lot is that in Japan, the bulk of meaningful innovation will come not from startups, but from midsize companies. With that, perhaps you won’t be too surprised to learn that Japan’s leading drone company is not a traditional startup, but a nearly 20-year-old midsize company that pivoted into drones from a completely different industry.

I sat down with Takayuki Kumada, founder and CEO of drone integrator Blue Innovation. His company attracted international attention last year with the announcement of their T-Frend drone, which is designed to reduce overtime by flying around the office, taking pictures of staff, and telling them to go home.

In this interview, we talk about how Blue Innovation became a drone company, the T-Frend project, and the future of drones.

What exactly is a drone integrator?

Being a drone integrator means we manage the hardware, software, and the entire solution. We work with various companies in different industries to sell drone technologies.

What was the company doing back in 1999?

We were focusing on environmental issues like coastal erosion. We developed the countermeasure against beach erosion and tsunami.

Aerial photographs are very important to understand the cause of a disaster. However, we couldn’t get any right after disasters happened. So, we thought about a possible solution.

In 2006, we researched the technology for how to take aerial photographs. We met with University of Tokyo professor Shinji Suzuki who developed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). He helped us with the research, then we eventually developed a coastal monitoring system using a UAV.

When did you pivot to become a drone company?

The International Civil Aviation Organization has recognized drones as unmanned aircraft systems. Many countries have also adopted the concept by amending their aviation laws. But at the time, the Japanese government did not follow suit.

Meanwhile, many companies, who have quickly adopted the concept of drones, were contacting us, asking about our UAV system. Since this opportunity was larger than the coastal monitoring business (which started to go down three years after we’ve started the company), we decided to focus on the drone business. This was about five years ago.

Tell us about the T-Frend project.

The T-Frend service is provided by Taisei; Blue Innovation strictly handles the technical side.

The system is designed for staffless office security and reduction of overtime work. The drone patrols an office, takes video footage of what’s there, and encourage people to go home by playing music.

This is more of a Japanese idea. The Japanese are very hardworking, and it’s been difficult for companies across the nation to reduce the amount of overtime employees work. So, I think the drone system will support the government in addressing this problem.

Are most drone applications limited by the hardware side or the software side?

What area do you think drones will change the most?

Do you have plans to expand globally?