DRONES
❝
SMES ARE CENTRAL TO THE UK
AND EUROPE COMMERCIAL
DRONE INDUSTRY WHICH HAS
ENJOYED PHENOMENAL GROWTH
IN RECENT YEARS WITH ONE
REPORT SUGGESTING WORLD
SALES WILL TOP $12BN IN 2021,
UP FROM $8BN LAST YEAR
of people gathers near an emergency
exit, teams can be alerted to clear
these areas for easy accessibility.
Damage assessment: Emergency
services and first responders can prescribe
a specific flight plan for drones, which
can capture images of their assigned grid.
These images can be analysed to access
potential damage, dangers, and to drive an
emergency response.
Aviation inspection: An aircraft
manufacturer can use a drone to inspect
the surface of a stationary aircraft as part
of its regular maintenance. The drone can
be programmed to follow the same flight
plan of an aircraft, taking images on the
fuselage in-flight to provide an even more
www.smeweb.com
valuable layer of insight that teams can
examine to help identify potential areas of
concern and prescribe appropriate action.
Aerialtronics, with distribution centres
in the UK and the rest of the world, is also
taking inspections and drone autonomy
to the next level by developing a smart
dual camera that packs massive onboard
processing power with both digital vision
and thermal sensors.
Jan Wouter Kruyt, VP of Strategic
Partnerships, says: “We have been
developing dual cameras that allow users
to switch between vision and thermal
data streams for some time. Now we have
put these data streams into the NVIDIA
chip and it means users can do some
very smart things with it. “This is a major
step forward in the level of autonomy
for drone. Now you can pre-programme
a drone and it will fly on a path you set
for it. But if you integrate machine vision
on an embedded chipset, you create
something more intelligent because it can
identify what is around it.
“If you drive up to a wind turbine,
utility p ole, mobile phone tower or a
house, all do you is press a button. The
Altura Zenith will go out with the camera,
identify what it needs to inspect, perform
a routine inspection and even design its
own mission based on what it sees. It will
verify it has completed its mission before
returning to base.”
SME
33