Parrot

Parrot is a French drone manufacturer headquartered in Paris. The company states that it was founded in 1994 by Henri Seydoux, who remains its chairman, chief executive and main shareholder, and it is listed on Euronext Paris under the ticker PARRO. Parrot develops its products in Europe and manufactures them in the United States and South Korea, employs more than 400 people and operates in more than 50 countries through subsidiaries in Switzerland, the United States, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Germany and Spain.

History

Parrot entered the drone market at CES in January 2010 with the AR.Drone, a Wi-Fi quadcopter flown from a smartphone that DRONELIFE describes as one of the defining products of the early consumer drone industry. It followed with the Bebop quadcopter in 2014, the Bebop 2 in 2015, the fixed-wing Disco in 2016 and the folding ANAFI in 2018. In 2012 Parrot took majority ownership of the Swiss fixed-wing maker senseFly and a stake in the photogrammetry software company Pix4D, which it later raised to a majority. In 2017 the company stopped making its wireless and connected-home products to concentrate on drones.

In July 2019 Parrot retired its older mini-drone lines and stated that the ANAFI platform, in configurations for consumers and professionals, represented the company's future. Since then its business has shifted toward professional and government customers: Parrot was selected in 2019 for the United States Army's Short Range Reconnaissance programme and the Defense Innovation Unit's Blue sUAS list, and it now describes itself as Europe's leading maker of professional micro-UAVs for defence, public-safety, government, enterprise and industrial operators.

Products

Parrot's current range is built around the ANAFI family and CHUCK 3.0. The ANAFI USA (2020) is a 500 g quadcopter with 32× zoom and a thermal camera, produced in the United States for enterprise, public-safety and defence users. The ANAFI Ai (2021) is a 4G-connected 48-megapixel mapping and inspection drone with an open software development kit. The ANAFI UKR is a third ANAFI variant listed on the company's site. Earlier consumer models, including the AR.Drone, Bebop and Disco, are no longer produced.