There is excitement around the Bégonia building in the Boutardes district of Vernon (Eure).
Under the gaze of a few curious people, a strange flying object connected to a long cable rises and falls, spraying the gray wall to give it new life.
This is the drone from the company Fly Rénov' which is carrying out an experiment in air cleaning the facades of social housing at the request of the lessor MonLogement 27. A first in Normandy.
“For us, it’s a way to see if this original technique works,” assures Catherine Delalande, the vice-president of the organization, whose main shareholder is none other than the department of Eure.
For her, the advantages are numerous: “This avoids having to install scaffolding, with the cost and time that this entails.
Overall, it's two to three times faster and three times cheaper.
And in terms of safety, it’s always better to avoid asking workers to intervene several meters above the ground.”
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If this solution were adopted, there would be no shortage of work since the social landlord's stock includes 22,000 housing units.
And Catherine Delalande's objective is clear: she wants the savings made to be devoted to the thermal renovation of buildings.
“For us it is a priority,” assures the vice-president.
Discovered during a trade fair dedicated to social housing, the start-up Fly Rénov' was therefore chosen for this full-scale test.
Co-founded by two engineers, one in aeronautics and the other in construction, associated with a doctor in “machine learning”, a branch of artificial intelligence, the company has been operational for around a year.
“But we spent three years developing our own drone,” explains Pierre Vidal, one of the company’s three creators.
The main technical difficulty, but not the only one, is that the device, which cost several tens of thousands of euros to design, must always remain at the same distance from the facade, particularly when using the medium pressure cleaner. .
“Too far, it is no longer effective.
Too close, it can cause damage to the surfaces it is supposed to clean,” continues the engineer.
The drone is therefore equipped with a calculator using artificial intelligence to locate itself to the nearest centimeter.
“The operator can concentrate on lateral movement and the actual cleaning.
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Using biodegradable products, in particular to get rid of moss, the small flying machine, which weighs around 8 kg, can operate up to around a hundred meters in height, which also explains why it is already used to clean wind turbine blades.
Obviously, the tenants were warned in advance of this operation, so as not to open their shutters when the drone passed.
“There are also sometimes questions about respecting people's privacy since obviously our drone is equipped with a camera to see what we are doing,” remarks Pierre Vidal.
And on this point he is categorical: “There is no recording and most of the time, with the reflection of the windows, the operator cannot see inside.”
An assessment of the operation will be carried out in a few weeks, notably the time for the cleaning products to finish having their effect but, already, the observation is there: it only took three days, including one of installation, for the facades to of the Bégonia building are getting a new lease of life.