Businesses are learning that sometimes the best way to boost the bottom line is by reaching for the sky.
Commercial drone usage across a wide variety of industries is exploding as businesses take advantage of rapidly advancing technology and falling hardware prices to incorporate the technology into their work flow.
“We believe drones will change the way people do business, now and in the future,” said Anil Nanduri, vice president and general manager within Intel’s New Technology Group.
He said drones are able to able to help in areas of manufacturing, farming, even manual labor. “And with new capabilities such as Intel RealSense collision avoidance technology, drones can literally be a company’s eye in the sky.”
At a recent international airshow in England, Intel and Airbus partnered to show how a modified AscTec Falcon 8 drone with Intel RealSense cameras could perform a visual inspection on an airplane.
A human pilot on the ground controlled the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), which followed a predetermined flight path and systematically took a series of pictures. The images — especially the ones showing scratches, dents and painting defects — are compiled in a 3-D digital model, recorded in a database and analyzed.
The inspection, which usually takes about two hours, took just 15 minutes with the drone. “We believe this prototype will further enable our products and our industry, as well as others,” said Nanduri.
Mapping from the Sky
“Incorporation of commercial drones is going to continue to grow exponentially,” says Darr Gerscovich, senior vice president of marketing at DroneDeploy.
To date, the aerial data consulting company’s clients have used DroneDeploy drone software to map more than 2 million acres across 100 countries. It helps dozens of industries collect and interpret drone data.
“We’re seeing a tipping point now, but it’s the first of many tipping points,” he said. Read More
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