Amar Hanspal, a senior VP at 3D design software maker Autodesk, said at a recent IoT event: “Amazon talks about delivering pizza with drones, but the real action is B2B. Industrial applications are where we’re seeing this take off.” Autodesk imaging software is often used to turn imagery collected by unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, into three-dimensional models, using photogrammetry, a type of computer science that converts 2D images into 3D.
Indeed, a wide range of industries, from agriculture to mining, are currently either testing or purchasing drone-based solutions. Drones, toting cameras or other sensors, can serve businesses by collecting data and imagery, which they can then transmit via the Internet to software that analyzes this information to create maps or graphical representations that provide quick, accurate visibility into business processes or assets, in order to improve operations.
Last month, RFID Journal reported that Age Steel, a steel yard operator based in the United Arab Emirates, mounted an RFID reader on a drone to quickly collect inventory data from RFID-tagged inventory within a storage yard.
Mark Heynen, senior VP of client operations at San Francisco-based SkyCatch, a provider of drones and data analytics, says the most popular use cases among his company’s mining and construction clients are linked to improving visibility into workflow and inventory management.
Very large construction firms that run projects with budgets in the $1 billion range, as well as mining companies, are turning to drones as a way to make daily, reliable quantifications of progress at job sites, Heynen reports. “In construction and mining,” he says, “it’s hard to know you’re on track or not. If the information isn’t digitized and collected often, you’re living in the world of checklists.”
SkyCatch assembles its own small quadrotor drones and also uses a bespoke device called a ground station—which acts as the drone’s home base and launcher—at job sites. The ground control unit is a 2-foot-square box outfitted with sensors that, once the drone returns from a flying mission, guide the device onto a landing portal on top of the box, all orchestrated via SkyCatch software. When the drone lands, a robotic arm inside the ground station removes its battery and swaps it for a fresh one. It then collects the image and coordinate data that the drone has collected and transmits it, via an Internet link, to SkyCatch servers in the cloud.
SkyCatch is working with a range of major construction companies, including Bechtel, DPR and French firm Bouygues. It also has customers in the energy business, including Chevron and First Solar.
Rio Tinto recently announced its “Mine of the Future” program, through which it is integrating a range of sensing and autonomous robotics technologies into its mineral-extraction processes. As part of this program, which it deployed at its West Angelas iron mine in Western Australia and is presently testing elsewhere, the mining giant is using SkyCatch drones and software for a number of applications.
Use Case: Volumetric Imaging
“With mining,” Heynen explains, “measuring volume is how you do your accounting for what you take out of the ground.” In open pit mining, an area is blasted, and the blasted material is shifted to remove the target ore. The mining company then measures the piles of ore, to be stockpiled, and the waste rock (or overburden).
When performed manually, these measurements are generally taken once a month, Heynen says. But using autonomous drones carrying digital cameras, mining companies can collect this information daily, thereby adding a great deal of near-real-time reporting and better accuracy to its records.
The drones fly in a specific pattern, based on GPS guidance, around the ore and waste piles, taking hundreds of images. These photographs are processed using SkyCatch and Autodesk software tools, to produce 3D images that are then analyzed to determine the volume of the material that has been photographed.
In the construction industry, volumetric measurements are used both to measure consumable inventory—think stockpiled piping or cables—so that project managers can gather accurate inventory records from day to day, and to ensure sufficient materials are on hand to complete the coming day’s construction tasks. Another use of the drones is to make sure that the site’s laydown yard has enough available space to accommodate an incoming shipment. Inventory, of course, is already tracked via other means, such as RFID tags or bar codes. But rather than dispatching someone into the field to collect that data, the drone and SkyCatch software would carry out the data collection autonomously.
Use Case: Safety
The massive trucks used to haul ore out of open pit mines enter and exit the pit on circular roadways built into the landscape. To ensure that these roads are constructed and graded accurately, in order to avoid collapse or other dangers, survey teams are sent out periodically—a time-consuming, labor-intensive process. A drone, on the other hand, can fly over the roadways and collect images that can later be analyzed to determine the angle of each surface, which is then used to ascertain the road’s safety.
Use Case: Logistics and Productivity
To stay on top of the progress being made at a job site, Heynen says, managers can utilize a drone to perform a visual survey at the end of each day, and then produce a large paper map of the site or create a projection of that site onto a whiteboard. During the regular all-hands meeting at the beginning of the following day, managers can use markers to draw on the map to show areas of progress, or lack thereof.
As construction progresses, builders can also work with designers and architects to ensure that the structure is hewing to plans, by comparing 3D models of the actual building-in-progress, created via drone imaging, to a 3D model of the planned facility. It is still very early-stage for this type of use case with drones, Heynen notes, but adds that he is bullish on the possibilities. “It can change the way people build things,” he says. “Architects plan things, but sometimes they’re not buildable. Before, there would be a redesign process or they would need a new model. [With drone-produced] models, you can start to work off the ‘as-built’ version, and the architect and builders can work collaboratively. The full implications of that are yet to be established.”
While all of these construction and mining use cases rely on passive sensing—that is, imagery converted into models using photogrammetry—SkyCatch attaches different types of sensors for customers in the energy or agriculture business. Thermal cameras are used to survey solar panel installations, in order to determine if specific panels are not at target temperatures. For energy or agricultural applications, the drones generally carry multispectral cameras designed for specific types of imaging.
SkyCatch declines to reveal the costs of its full-service offering—which includes the autonomous ground control unit, as well as software and analysis services—but says it leases its hardware and sells software seats.
To tap into smaller companies that lack the means to purchase the full-service product, SkyCatch also recently launched an offering known as WORKMODE whereby it will dispatch a drone pilot (a human one, not the ground control robot), along with a drone and the required sensing attachments to a company (or an individual, such as a landowner performing a major building renovation) that needs to map an area just once or a handful of times.
SkyCatch is far from the only company looking to tap into commercial drone applications. Canadian firm Aeryon, as well as a cluster of other California startups in the Bay Area, including 3D Robotics, Airware, and DroneDeploy, are all targeting various business use cases.
Regulatory Framework-in-process
The legality of commercial uses of drones is a bit murky at present. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is still in the process of regulating what types of commercial entities will be able to use which types of drones, as well as where and how. Other countries are also parsing their rules around drone use. While technologists tend to dismiss government regulations, drone companies are eager for the FAA to set their final rules regarding usage, since the fear of the unknown might be causing some potential customers to sit on the sidelines, watching and waiting.