Every CleanHawa route follows the same sequence — from load to landing — with an air-quality reading logged alongside the delivery. Here's what happens end to end, and a look at who else worldwide is building drone-based air sensing.
No black box — this is the same sequence for a plantation pickup, a hospital sample run, or a pure air-quality mapping flight.
A pickup and destination are logged — an estate, a warehouse, a clinic. The corridor is checked against weather, airspace clearance, and payload limits before a flight is scheduled.
Cargo is weighed and secured. The onboard PM2.5/PM10/NOx sensor pod is checked and calibrated so the air-quality reading on this run is comparable to the last one on the same corridor.
The aircraft flies the corridor at a set altitude, logging position, air-quality readings, and estimated emissions avoided compared with the diesel vehicle that would have made the same trip.
Cargo is dropped at the destination and signed for. For pure sensing flights, this step is a return to base instead of a handoff.
The client receives two things from one flight: a delivery confirmation, and an air-quality reading for that corridor — usable for internal tracking or ESG/compliance reporting.
Drone-based air-quality sensing is an active field across North America and Europe — from defence-grade sensor platforms to university research flights. CleanHawa applies the same core idea to short-haul cargo corridors in India.
A long-established US drone manufacturer whose small aircraft platforms have been fitted with compact multi-gas sensor payloads for tracking pollutants like CO, NO₂, O₃, SO₂, and PM2.5 in urban and industrial settings, used by government and research bodies.
A US drone-data company offering real-time air-quality tracking built on precision sensors and AI-driven analytics, aimed at giving cities and industry a clearer read on localized pollution.
Originally focused on compact low-cost air-quality sensors for indoor spaces like hospitals and manufacturing floors, TelosAir has extended into drone-based measurement through a research collaboration, alongside sensor work backed by NASA.
A Swedish gas-sensor manufacturer whose engineers contributed to the European FLAIR project, using UAVs to map detailed air-quality data around industrial sites, highways, ports, and disaster zones such as wildfires.
A Dutch heavy-lift drone manufacturer that configures UAV platforms with air-quality sensor payloads for urban pollution mapping and methane-leak detection around energy infrastructure.
Dutch researchers built a low-cost sensor drone that measured particulate matter at altitude over Delhi, uncovering unexpectedly high pollution levels around 100 metres above ground — work that's shaping how vertical air-quality profiles get studied.
Most of these efforts are sensing-only, built for research or compliance mapping. CleanHawa's difference is pairing that same sensing capability with a revenue-generating cargo run, so the flight pays for itself instead of relying on a research grant or a monitoring contract alone.
A quick look at how a typical air-quality drone programme compares with a CleanHawa route.
| Typical sensing-only programme | CleanHawa | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary payload | Sensors only | Cargo + sensors |
| Revenue source | Grant / monitoring contract | Cargo delivery fee + AQ subscription |
| Flight frequency | Scheduled research runs | Tied to actual cargo demand on the route |
| Emissions story | Measures pollution | Measures pollution and avoids it on the same run |
Tell us the route and we'll scope the first flight — cargo, sensing, or both.
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