AV News - Airobotics

Most drones require a human operator to not only control the drone, but also to replace its batteries and other accessories. One company has taken that human element out of it with what they believe is a game-changing platform. Tyler Mason has more. When Airobotics first began using drones seven years ago, the Israeli company was flying them for the standard purposes. Cinematography, mapping, and inspections were among the more popular uses at the time. But the company eventually realized a few things: their model was tough to scale, and the human element of flying a drone was something that can be inconsistent. So Airobotics set out to introduce something that was not only scalable but removed the need for a human pilot. According to Efrat Fenigson: “Our mission then began to think of a drone platform that will be completely automatic and completely self-sufficient and it will not rely on a human to operate it and it will be permanently situated on site so it's always available when customers needed and they don't have to wait for operators to come in and fly a drone.” The Airobotics drone is housed in a large industrial-grade metal box that can be left at a project site. The box measures 6.9 feet by 8.5 feet and weighs 2.5 tons. Inside is the company’s drone, Optimus, which takes off and lands from the box. The aircraft itself can fly for roughly 30 minutes per battery and contains an emergency parachute onboard. A robotic arm inside the drone solution is capable of changing the drone’s batteries and sensors autonomously. And with the ability to fly pre-planned missions, the drone can take off, fly, and land with just the click of a button. “So we have two modes of operation. The first one would be as you said, pre-programmed. And so we work through a schedule with the customer and we define all the applications in advance. They get cleared by the aviation authority and then there is a schedule, every Monday at 7 go and run this application, every Monday at 9.30 do this one and then it just goes off on its own. However, there is the possibility of launching emergency response type of applications with a click of a button if there is a need because one of our advantages is the fact that the facility we operate in is fully mapped in advance. And so if there is an incident at some point around the facility we know to tell the drone this is the geolocation, get to that point in the quickest route that you already have in the system and just stay there and hover and give us a view.” Because the Airobotics drone flies autonomously, several factors come into play with regards to the legality of flights. The company has filed lots of paperwork and done plenty of testing to ensure that each of its drone systems can comply with aviation regulations in a variety of countries. “In order to reach that we had to write dozens of technical manuals and concept of operations, books, and to hand that over to the aviation authority and take them through technically and operationally how we operate.” The uses for the Airobotics system range from mining to security to inspections. The drone has options for payloads that include lidar, a mapping camera, and multiple cameras with optical zooms. The drone has the ability to fly more than three miles from the base station during the flight. The company doesn’t offer specifics on the cost of the system, but believes it saves their clients — most of whom rent the system for a certain length of time — money in the long run. “The business case will be different from one customer to another but basically they're seeing in the first years of working with us savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is for them, this is a game changer.”