The drone ranger

Chinese drone developer DJI is spreading its wings into several enterprise industries, including infrastructure and construction. Martyn Day reports from its recent US event

DJI: the drone ranger

In today’s society, the idea of drones gets a mixed response. People tend to think of military uses, sinister surveillance tactics, Amazon’s work on using drones to make deliveries, or the potential risks that drones pose to commercial aircraft.

The reality is that drones are incredibly popular with consumers, but also have many possible industrial applications, most of which have yet to see mainstream adoption.

China-based DJI is the leader in a rapidly growing market for drones. According to Gartner, global drone unit sales grew an estimated 60 percent last year to 2.2 million, and revenues grew 36 percent to $4.5 billion. That market is projected to grow to almost 3 million units and more than $6 billion in revenue this year.

DJI dominates the market. Its nearest competitors can each only muster singledigit market shares. The company has over 1,500 engineers working on research and development and seems to come out with a new drone about every six months, with each new introduction making gains in terms of numbers of sensors, speed, longevity and offering new sizes and capabilities. Now, DJI is focusing on expanding the commercial use of its drones within construction, infrastructure, agriculture, public safety and energy.

In recognition of the emerging role of drones in the AEC sector, CAD companies such as Autodesk and Bentley have accelerated their development of laser scanning and photogrammetry capabilities (Reality Capture in Autodesk parlance, ContextCapture in Bentley speak - see page 28), enabling the capture of as-built structures, pre-existing terrain, building sites and infrastructure.

This has led to partnerships with drone firms, such as Skycatch, which offers drone surveys, model making and data analysis based on the DJI drone platform. As desktop applications become enabled to handle 3D data that has been captured, new opportunities are opening up.

Drone use-cases take off The race for new capabilities looks set to continue. With large firms now moving to deploy drones for inspection tasks, DJI has introduced a new cloud-based appli-

cation called FlightHub to help keep track of pilots, tasks, drones and flight data across an enterprise, from anywhere on the planet.

Using a secure HTTPS link from the DJI Pilot application, data is sent to the cloud, where it can be remotely accessed. The cloud platform brings together flight logs, user information, real-time telemetry, an ability to see a ‘live view’ from drone cameras, together with team and hardware management tools. The subscription service comes in three flavours — Basic, Advanced and Enterprise — with prices starting from $99 per month.

While DJI has many of its own engineers working on its drone technology, the company has also recently opened up its in-flight operating system with a software development kit [SDK]. This enables third-party, custom-built applications to be run in-flight that either access sensors or flight controls, support inflight processing of data, or permit the inclusion of other hardware, such as LiDAR systems, thermal cameras, RFID scanners or additional GPUs for on-board processing.

It would seem that this has created a burgeoning ecosystem for the developer community to build commercial applications for mission-specific uses. For example, insurance firms are keen to use drones to quickly assess damage to areas with many buildings, speeding up damage assessment, when situations such as hurricanes, tornadoes and forest fires strike, as has been so common during 2017.

US network operator Verizon has been won over by drones — so much so that it has acquired several firms that help it manage and inspect its millions of antennas and poles. That has allowed Verizon to rid itself of 30,000 inspection trucks costing $50,000 each, replacing them with an army of drones priced at $1,000 each. For DJI, SDK usage is exploding, with over 2.7 million activations in 2017, up from 1 million last year when the kit was first introduced. The latest version allows developers to tap into drones’ visual recognition systems, helping developers code unique autonomous (in other words, self-flying) drone solutions.

The company’s heavy-duty pro drones, the Wind 4 and Wind 8, can also be customised using the SDK for more complex tasks and unique sensor payloads. The Wind 4 can lift 13.5kg, for example, while the Wind 8 octocopter offers increased stability together with redundancy.

At DJI’s Airworks conference, there was a lot of talk concerning big data and analysis. Collecting imagery is just the start of the process. While the computing power found on board the drone is focused on flying (making sure the drone doesn’t hit anything and getting it back to where its mission started) additional processing can be added and accessed via the SDK. Alternatively, the data might be sent to the cloud and processed using Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions such as IBM Watson, in order to identify all manner of situations — landslides, escaping gases, fires and so on. Data ecosystems are now being built around drone inspection.

DJI also demonstrated an application it is developing for filmmakers to assist with pre-production and location capture. Called Project Vertex, users will be able to fly a drone over a site to capture an environment in photos that are then converted to a 3D model. Then, using the 3D model, it’s possible to examine the location in detail in real time and plan

The Wind 8 octocopter boasts increased stability

camera paths, allowing for lenses with different focal points. When the director is happy with the flight path and view through a scene, this can be uploaded to a drone, which will meticulously follow the path. This could just as easily be used on construction sites and proposed mixed reality models for architecture.

Developers get involved A number of interesting third-party developers exhibited at Airworks, including:

Pix4D (pix4d.com) offers mobile, desktop and cloud-based solutions that will capture, process, analyse and share models for surveying, construction, real estate and agriculture. The company has a new technology, Pix4Dbim, which delivers accurate photogrammetry from dronecaptured imagery, delivering precise 2D orthomosaics and 3D mesh/models using machine learning. Pix4D’s system can identify buildings, trees, hard ground surfaces, rough ground and humanmade objects and, at the the click of a button, automatically classify the contents of dense point clouds into these categories.

Propeller Aero (propelleraero.com) gave an interesting presentation on how it is helping landfill firms maximise the use of land with regular scanning, as well as assessing the height of landfill and calculating natural subsidence. The company offers construction firms the ability to generate topological maps, generate cut and fills and track project progress against design, measuring volumes, distances, grades and heights. Propeller Aero recently signed a deal with Trimble for global distribution of its cloud-based visualisation platform and is being integrated with Trimble’s Connected Site solutions.

Drone Deploy (dronedeploy.com) provides image processing, data storage, real-time sharable drone maps and 3D models through its enterprise platform. With a focus on workflows, the company provides accurate dronebased surveys, project monitoring and measurement. It also integrates point clouds with BIM workflows (it is an Autodesk Forge developer), enabling construction sites to be compared to BIM designs. The company has a free app for controlling automated flight paths, map generation and creation of 3D models, together with a portal for sharing data.

Precision Hawk (precisionhawk.com) has built a platform that supports both multirotor and fixed wing drones, together with a wide array of sensors (photo, video, 3 or 5 band, LiDAR, thermal and hyperspectral). The company enables the collection of data through autonomous drone flights, offers survey reviews in-field and rapid processing, modelling and reporting for additional analysis. Precision Hawk’s drone safety platform provides real-time airspace and ground obstacle data for drone safety, to reduce risks to manned aircraft and airports. The company also provides clients with the services of experienced pilots and data wranglers and is the only firm authorised by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fly beyond visual line of sight.

Legal issues With the explosion of consumer drones and with drone flights now outnumbering commercial flights two to one, there

have been some negative stories of conflicts in airspace and misuse.

This was a running theme throughout the conference: presenters from the Menlo Park Fire Brigade, for example, reported that even they had trouble getting the FAA to let them use drones to track forest fires.

The industry is keen to train and certificate professional pilots, but current laws still mean that drones cannot typically fly beyond visual range and special permission is required to fly above crowds.

There was much talk about lobbying the US government and the FAA’s work in testing drone impacts on cadavers, in order to estimate the levels of damage that a malfunctioning drone could cause. Other attendees spoke of implementing measures to liberate the market by introducing the same kind of professionalism that applies to more established forms of aviation.

In response to concerns around risk, DJI has introduced AeroScope, a ready-to-use system to enable authorities to identify, track and monitor airborne drones, especially near sensitive locations or in areas of safety concern, such as airports. The solution acts like an ‘electronic license plate’ for drones and helps to ensure they remain in safe and secure airspace, transmitting registration or serial numbers, as well as basic telemetry, including location, altitude, speed and direction. The company also is working on geo-locking technology, to prevent drones flying into commercial airspace or sensitive locations.

In the UK, the government has just announced proposals to make pilots of drones over 250g in weight take a safety awareness course and is looking to ban drones from flying over 400ft and near airports, with current limitations stating they must stay at least 40 metres from other people and 50 metres from buildings. This new legislation was based on 81 reported incidents during 2017, a figure that doubled from 2016.

Drone futures While it’s amazing to see what drones can do today, there was one presentation in particular that looked at what might be commercially available in the next few years. DJI has invested in AutoModality, a New York-based firm that is developing an autonomous bridge inspection drone, based on the DJI platform. The new system enables fully autonomous close-up infrastructure inspection and assists workers by accessing difficult and dangerous locations on a structure on their behalf, allowing them to remain safely on the ground.

AutoModality adds additional FlightHub can help DJI is making efforts to develsensors to the guards of the drone blades to help with assesskeep track of pilots, tasks, drones and flight data across an op controls and tools for the monitoring of drone flights, to ing proximity to objects and uti- enterprise lessen the risks they pose. With lises an attached LiDAR scanner, commercial drone usage predictfeeding an extra Nvidia GPU powered ed to grow dramatically, government agenbrain. The team built a mock-up of the cies need to derive workable on-demand interior of a bridge structure to test-fly measures for professional missions. the autonomous drone, occasionally The success of DJI’s SDK, meanwhile, pushing it with a stick to see if it would is bringing tailored applications to the autocorrect. The drone flew down the construction and infrastructure market, narrow channel with just inches to spare. from initial site capture prior to design,

For live trials, AutoModality first all the way to monitoring assets during attempted inspection using manually their lifecycle. flown drones but ‘lost’ two of these in the In many of the talks given by developers process. Large metal objects like bridges at Airworks, big data processing was one tend to warp the GPS signal or introduce of the most common topics, with some of blind spots, causing loss of control. With this work being performed on-board, but its new autonomous drone, the team the majority needing post-processing and achieved a full 70ft flight down a narrow analysis. With the many benefits of drones channel on the bridge, avoiding collisions comes the problem of how to handle and and returning with inspection footage. use all the data they generate per flight.

One of the biggest limitations of drone Looking ahead, with AI, machine learntechnology remains battery life. By add- ing and an increasing number of sensors ing extra sensors and GPU processing, incorporated into drones, the role of AutoModality shrunk the drone’s flight humans in piloting these machines is time to just 15 minutes. Adding extra bat- looking highly doubtful – just as we also tery capacity for longer flight times, how- see in driving. In other words, drones ever, is perhaps one of the biggest issues could be just another form of autonomous for autonomous flight. Range is limited vehicle, operating above and alongside and inspection teams are forced to fly the cars and trucks, with significant impact drone in close proximity to its target. on our cities and their infrastructure. However, like autonomous cars, autono- According to one speaker from Verizon, mous drones are clearly the direction in the company is contemplating a future which the industry is heading. where drones act as the cell masts of a city, intelligently steering themselves to where Conclusion they are most needed in bandwidth terms, Its success in consumer drones has ena- rather than being located in fixed posibled DJI to invest in producing ever- tions. In this way, if a football game, for smarter drones at remarkably low prices. example, increased the density of cell But it’s a double-edged sword, with demand in a certain district, extra dronedrones unleashed in airspace with no based antenna could be flown in, in order real solutions to the challenges of moni- to meet temporary spikes in need. Over toring or tracing owners. This has left the coming years, many other organisainstitutions responsible for airspace tions may allow drone technology to take management playing catch-up and is them on similar flights of the imagination. inhibiting professional drone usage. ■ dji.com