INTERVIEW Aerial drones – 2.0 in real-time mapping and data gathering Dick Zhang, CEO, Identified Technologies To kick-start our weekly interview feature we are talking today to Dick Zhang, the CEO of Identified Technologies. The company was recently shortlisted in the prestigious Ben Franklin Shale Innovation Awards for their Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and docking system. These drones (quadra-rotor robotic craft) provide highres optical, infrared, and gas-sniffing data, while being totally independent and self-sufficient – they can be deployed over a site and they will gather data, autonomously swap or charge batteries, and upload the data to the cloud for easy remote access. Monica Thomas (Shale Gas International): Your company’s aerial drones were shortlisted in the most recent round of Shale Innovation Awards. Can you tell us what the real-life applications of these drones are? Dick Zhang (CEO, Identified Technologies): The short story is that we’re helping these oil and gas and construction jobsites to work smarter and work faster. We do it via real-time 2D and 3D maps. Raw data is captured by the drone flying over the area, in the form of GPS and geospatial files along with photos, and then we have our own processing equipment where we put all that raw data through and create the sort of contour-lined volumetric analysis, linear analysis, and these really, really granular 3D models of these job sites. MT: So that would be a part of the prospecting phase – am I correct in thinking that? DZ: Yes, that’s right. That would be a part of a prospecting phase on a new compressor site or a new processing site. It’s also part of a construction build out of that new site as well. With all that activity happening on these sites, there’s no way for these jobsite managers to
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accurately track what’s going on and make real-time decisions – because they’re using outdated data. So right now we’re primarily useful in these phases in that we deliver this real-time mapping information via a drone that can fly itself, capture data, and upload that data for processing by itself, and it can also land and swap its own batteries - literally on the jobsite. It can do all that by itself. This is exciting stuff, and we primarily work with a lot of the large gas construction guys, here in PA, Virginia, and Ohio, and we’re starting to see a lot of pull down in Dakota and Texas, and even – you know – Africa. MT: Say, if an upstream company wanted to employ your services, would it be the case of buying one of those units, or is it that you provide the full solution including the software and everything that is required?
DZ: The big differentiator for us, actually, is that a lot of what’s on the market today for these mapping solutions is very expensive. You’re going to spent anywhere from 40 to 140 thousand dollars, buying one of these things. And then you need to spend weeks and months training some guy; you’ve got the get insurance, you’ve got to get extra hardware, because these things will inevitably break. So that’s what it looks like today. We’re a turn-key, one-stop solution for mapping. When we engage with a new client, the only two things we ask them are: “give us a GoogleEarth file of your jobsite perimeter and tell us the highest crane on your jobsite”. And then we’ll take care of everything else.
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It’s literally one step: get this thing on site, hit a button and go. And it will take care of everything by itself. So that’s a big differentiator, and then we also, instead of trying to sell the systems, we lease the hardware, the software and the data. Our clients can lease all that for one monthly price, you know, instead of having to spend 100,000 dollars for a piece of equipment. MT: This obviously is an innovative solution, so what would be the ‘old school’ way of doing the same job? DZ: The old school version is “I’m going to send some guy out there, we’re either going to use satellite data or we’re going to use the survey polls”. So it’s a tripod with the GPS and they’re going to walk around, they’re going to find a point and survey it for five minutes and move to the next point, and so on.
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We went through the early stages of working with these early adopters, but now we are on the uptake to get to being a commonplace on a lot of these jobsites.
So it’s very dangerous, very laborious, very slow – and not very granular information. That’s what it looks like traditionally. With us we’re doing this two hundred times faster, sixty times more frequently, and we’re doing it ten thousand times more granular and more accurate than anything that these guys have access to today. It’s a completely revolutionary way to acquire a map of these jobsites. MT: In terms of time, what would be the saving? DZ: Traditionally, the time to get results, you’re looking at anywhere between two weeks to two months. We deliver results in two hours. MT: That’s quite amazing. In that case that is absolutely a game-changer. So what stage are you at in terms of the adoption of the technology? DZ: We’ve been working with clients for a year now, and a lot of the last year was spent answering some of the finer details and the finer questions, in terms of how we can help these guys. We went through the early stages of working with these early adopters, but now we are on the uptake to get to being commonplace on a lot of these jobsites. We’re seeing a really excellent momentum in getting there. I think a lot of it is just it takes time and trust from our customers and the delivery on our part to make this all happen. Hopefully we will keep seeing this momentum, keep seeing this activity, and over the next year we’ll become a commonplace tool to help these companies.
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MT: Are you thinking of taking your technology to an international market? Do you have any contracts outside the U.S.? DZ: We’re actually looking at working with a couple of strategic partners and potential customers in Africa as well as China and Japan. So no contracts yet, but a lot of that is just the limitation of geography and resources. We’re backlogged with demand and business in the U.S., so we’re going to work out the demand over time and be able to help our international clients. But, you know, it’s a process; you’ve got to crawl before you walk. There’s clearly interest, but we need to make sure that we continue to deliver the highest quality of product. So that’s the big focus for us - and we will continue to do so in these regions to get those relationships abroad – so when the time is right we can head to Africa and head to Asia. MT: Are there any permissions that are required to operate these drones in the United States? DZ: Yes, so there’s something called the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, and we work closely with them, telling them what our clients are using this technology for, and what they want to use this technology for. There’s a couple of regulatory filings that we go through – we’re obviously very transparent and we see it as a partnership with the FAA, to help them create regulations. That’s how we’re doing this now. As these become more common, I think –and everybody expects that in the industry – we will start to see regulations relaxed a little bit, where you won’t have to go through these filings. We’re excited to see officially the rules come out and see these rules developed within the industry. MT: What exactly are the concerns that require legislation? Is it the question of privacy or are there other concerns? DZ: Well, what’s really nice about the work we do – we fly over jobsites in the middle of nowhere
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in West Virginia. So there’s no question of privacy. The nearest town is fifteen miles away, and has 700 people, the nearest airport is 40 miles away. In that regard this is a really excellent place to be deploying this kind of technology. The regulatory relationships are in place because we have to keep flights below 400 feet, we have to keep them within the line of sight, we have to have the right safety protocols, for sensor malfunctions, or if there’s a lot of wind. So there’s a number of safety protocols that we’ve built into this platform, that allow us to stay at the forefront of safety. MT: Would you say that this legislation is imminent? DZ: We should actually see these broad rules sometimes in the next year. So that’s exciting; the industry has been waiting for that for some time. MT: My understanding is that for a normal prospecting job you would deploy one of these drones. But I have seen your TED talk where you demonstrated these devices flying in a swarm – which was quite impressive. What would be the potential implementations of a swarm of these machines? DZ: We use them right now in a single deployment; just because the jobsites that we are on are a little bit smaller, but moving forward as we move to bigger jobsites we will be able to deploy four, ten, twenty of these units at any given time. MT: Where do you see your company going within the next several years? Will it be towards international expansion or the development of new products? What are your plans? DZ: I think that in the future there’s a lot of opportunity in more than just gas. Every jobsite in the world needs real-time mapping. Currently we’re helping these gas guys and we have a roadmap to help them even more and that includes methane detection, leak detection, preventing explosions along the pipelines, explosions in processing plants and infrastructure. But I think the broader opportunity out there is that we’re slowly becoming experts at taking raw, useless, data – coming off the satellites, coming off the planes, coming off off these UAVs – taking that data and turning it into useful, actionable data that our clients can take advantage of. So I think the long-term opportunity lies in the fact that it doesn’t matter where we get the data –we can get it either from our own high-flying planes, or other people’s planes, from any source in the world – and we can be the experts in making that raw data useful. Published: 1st June, 2015
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