2018 — 2021
Legal Drone — flight approvals
Geodata, documents and approval workflows. An independent business.
Founder and full-stack developer
The challenge
Operators had to manually navigate fragmented rules, documents and approval steps.
What I built
- Researched approval processes and operator needs.
- Designed geographic classification and document workflows.
- Founded the company, developed the Laravel/Vue product and served a paying customer.
Results
- A registered company, a paying customer and first place in a business incubator group.
Components & connections
Planning
- Drone operatorFlight planning and map interaction in the web product.
- Maps & geodataGeographic context for the flight area.
Domain logic
- Area mappingConnecting the area to applicable rules.
- Rules & requirementsTerritorial and regulatory flight requirements.
Approval
- Documents & templatesDocuments supporting the approval process.
- Approval stepsApproval steps with manual assistance where needed.
- Drone operator→Area mappingflight area
- Maps & geodata→Area mappinggeodata
- Rules & requirements→Area mappingconstraints
- Area mapping→Documents & templatesrequirements
- Documents & templates→Approval stepsdocuments
Engineering takeaway
Context
A drone flight approval service in a regulated domain.
- Complex rules and several parties involved in approvals.
Approach
Built the domain model, processes and interface around regulations and research into customer needs.
- Translated legal requirements into explicit steps and templates.
- Maintained a manual service while automation did not yet cover the entire process.
Lessons
- Strong technology cannot compensate for a product’s economic and legal constraints.
- A founder’s work includes operations, sales and support, as well as code.
Stack
- Laravel
- Vue
- Geospatial services
- Interactive maps
- Geographic regulations
- Document workflows