Percepto Successfully Passes the SOC 2 Type II Audit

Data security and privacy has been a priority at Percepto since day one. And now we’re thrilled to announce we have successfully passed a SOC 2 Type II audit. In this blog post, we’ll explain what an SOC 2 Type II audit is and why it’s essential for any drone inspection program.

Automated drones collect and transmit enormous amounts of data, including images and videos of critical infrastructure. Since these drones have become integral components of critical workflows, ensuring data security has become a top priority for both government and enterprise stakeholders. Any company that utilizes drones for inspection and monitoring must have robust security measures in place to protect sensitive data and intellectual property, as well as prevent unauthorized access to systems and physical sites. Data security is also needed in order to maintain compliance with legal requirements and foster trust with clients.

As a drone industry leader, Percepto has consistently emphasized data security and privacy both internally and for customers. That commitment was recognized several months ago when we received ISO 27001, and successfully passing a SOC 2 Type II audit is yet another milestone in our commitment to data security compliance.

What is an SOC 2 Type II audit?

SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls) is an audit based on standards established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). The audit assesses how companies store and manage customer data and includes a comprehensive evaluation of their security processes.

Percepto was audited by Ernst and Young (EY) who confirmed that we meet all standards for SOC 2 Type II, including access controls and reviews, software development, network and platform monitoring, vendor risk management, security and compliance monitoring, and more.

Why is SOC 2 Type II auditing important?

Working with a SOC 2-audited provider like Percepto gives drone program managers and IT personnel an additional layer of assurance that sensitive data will be safely stored and managed and that the infrastructure, tools, and processes they implement will meet the highest data protection standards in the industry.

Percepto’s success in the SOC 2 Type II audit underscores our unwavering commitment to data security and customer trust. By subjecting ourselves to such rigorous external auditing and evaluation, we have demonstrated our dedication to safeguarding sensitive data.

As drones continue to play an essential role in critical workflows, Percepto’s data security compliance sets a benchmark for the industry, ensuring a safer and more secure environment for all stakeholders involved in drone operations.

Drones and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) have become a vital component of the aviation ecosystem. As drone activity has expanded both in terms of use cases and ubiquity, regulatory bodies worldwide have begun introducing rules and regulations that aim to integrate UASs into national airspace systems safely.  Many of these emerging regulations directly impact companies that are using drones for inspection and monitoring of their sites.

One such example is the new remote ID regulation in the United States and Europe, put in place to ensure safe UAS flights while promoting public security and privacy.  As of the respective deadlines, which are September 16, 2023, for the US, and January 1, 2024, for the EU, regulations mandate that all drones in operation must possess remote capabilities.

To prepare for these deadlines, we’ve put together an overview of the new regulations, including information about how you can remain compliant.

Why do we need remote ID?

Remote ID is an important component of public safety and security in drone operations. The new regulation enables regulatory bodies to locate a drone’s Remote Pilot In Command (RPIC) and identify the drone owners whenever the need arises, for example in an emergency situation.

 

What is a remote ID?

Remote ID regulation requires drones to broadcast their location, altitude, and take-off location information with other relevant parties, enabling to identify the drones and their operators while in flight. To protect operator privacy, access to pilots’ personal information is restricted solely to the respective regulatory bodies and authorized officials.

What information does the drone broadcast?

From take-off to shut down, the drone broadcasts:

• Drone /Operator ID
• Drone location and altitude
• Drone velocity
• Control station location and elevation
• Time mark
• Emergency status

What are the deadlines for remote ID operations?

USA regulations

The new regulations state that any drone weighing more than 0.55 pounds must transmit a signal containing its serial number, position, and altitude. The drone’s serial number will be connected to the owner’s registration data in the FAA’s database, and authorized officials will be able to access the owner’s information using the serial number, similar to the process of checking vehicle registration using a license plate number.

The Remote ID rule contains two basic deadlines. First, drone manufacturers must begin making remote ID-compliant drones by December 16, 2022. Drone pilots, under part 107 of the regulation, must fly remote ID-compliant systems beginning on September 16, 2023.

European regulation

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has also introduced remote ID regulations for UAS operating in EU airspace.  The new legislation states that any drone that is not tethered or weighs more than 250 gr must transmit a signal containing its operator ID number—a designated number that every UAS operating organization receives from regulatory bodies—as well as its position and altitude.

Authorized officials of the National Aviation Authority (NAA) in the relevant EU member state will be able to access the drone owner’s information using the operator ID number.  The remote ID rule states that as of January 1, 2024, all drones operating in Europe must have remote ID broadcasting capabilities.

How Percepto is ensuring compliance with the remote ID regulation deadlines

Percepto is committed to full compliance with the new regulations. Let’s look at how Percepto is adapting to accommodate the new remote ID regulations:

New Percepto Air drones will include internal WiFi antennas that broadcast the ID, location, altitude, and velocity of the drone, making compliance simple. A second channel interface (e.g., cell phone, tablet) broadcasts the RPIC location and the operator must approve the location request sent in order to take off.

Compliance with USA deadlines

The FAA’s new Remote Identification (ID) rule took effect for manufacturers late last year.  To prepare for the new regulation, Percepto has implemented remote ID broadcasting capabilities into its drones. As of December 16, 2022, all new Percepto Air drones are compliant with the new regulatory requirements.

The second step of the remote ID regulation in the USA requires operators to begin using remote ID-compliant products by September 16, 2023. To help customers meet that requirement, we have developed an operational process for equipping all US Percepto Air systems already deployed at customer sites with the needed modifications to be compliant by the deadline.

Europe

To prepare for the new regulation, Percepto is implementing remote ID broadcasting capabilities into its drones. As of January 1, 2024, all new Percepto Air drones will be compliant with the new regulatory requirements.

In addition, all Percepto Air systems already deployed at EU customer sites will be equipped by Percepto with remote ID broadcasting capabilities by January 1, 2024.

The bottom line

Remote ID regulation is an important step in the development of the UAS ecosystem, and, with the approaching deadlines for implementation in both Europe and the United States, every company that utilizes UASs in its operations needs to be aware of the new requirements. If you have questions about remote IDs or would like to speak to a regulatory expert, contact us.

Insights from Percepto’s market survey

A series of high-profile methane leaks at sites around the world, such at Aliso Canyon, California and Nord Stream in the Baltic Sea, have brought the oil and gas industry under increasing scrutiny in the past decade. As our understanding of the environmental ramifications of these leaks continues to grow, oil and gas industry leaders are reinforcing their commitment to implementing extensive protective measures in their facilities. The question is, are they doing enough? Are utilities and heavy industry facilities inspecting their critical assets sufficiently?

To answer that question (among others), we conducted a market survey on visual inspection practices that queried 200 managers and executives within the global energy and oil & gas industries.

The growing need for inspection and monitoring

In light of the survey results, it’s important to understand why frequent visual inspection and monitoring are so critical. Utilities companies and heavy industry facilities are responsible for delivering critical infrastructure and resources, from electricity to natural gas and fertilizer, and almost always work with potentially hazardous materials. Therefore, failures and malfunctions can have catastrophic ramifications. As severe weather events become more frequent due to climate change, power utilities are also under pressure to ensure their grid is as resilient as possible and to restore power quickly after storms and other major weather occurrences.

In addition, changing societal priorities have led to increasingly strict environmental regulations, especially regarding emissions. Heavy industry is responsible for an estimated 40% of carbon emissions, and the real number may be even higher as gas emissions are notoriously underreported. In the past, the industry may not have been held accountable for its emissions, but that is no longer the case. For example, in the U.S., the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act contains extensive climate change legislation, including large fines for emissions, which companies can ill afford. The new legislation has put energy providers under pressure to both cut emissions and produces greener energy to remain compliant.

Traditional inspection is so difficult that it doesn’t get done enough

Despite the importance of visual monitoring and inspection, our survey showed that energy and oil & gas companies are falling short. Failures and malfunctions can happen at any time, which is why ideally, critical assets should be surveyed daily. However, our survey showed that only 1% of companies conduct daily inspections. Worryingly, 12% conduct inspections only monthly, or even less frequently. The significant time lags between inspections exponentially increase the likelihood of small issues becoming major problems. Beyond the safety and waste-reducing benefits of timely inspections, more frequent monitoring can also deliver huge environmental benefits, such as reducing fugitive emissions through faster detection of gas leaks.

A bigger concern is the fact that the assets inspected least, such as tanks, pipelines, powerlines, and electric poles are precisely the assets that could cause the most damage if they break down or if something goes wrong. They are also the assets that are the hardest to inspect, whether because they pose a higher risk to employees, are geographically far apart from one another, or need to be shut down to be thoroughly inspected.

Almost three-quarters (74%) of respondents said that budget and resources were the main barriers to conducting more frequent visual inspections. Yet without sufficient inspection, failures are often caught at a late stage, at which point they can lead to catastrophic loss of life, billions of dollars in fines for environmental damage, and huge losses in productivity.

Preventing the next disaster

Most companies want to become good corporate citizens, remain resilient in extreme environments, and respond quickly to mitigate disasters. However, our study shows that it simply isn’t feasible to achieve those goals using traditional manual, labor-intensive inspections, especially for hard-to-reach and critical assets.

Indicating that the majority of companies recognize the value of more automated monitoring, our survey showed that while only 16% of companies are currently using drones for monitoring, a whopping 81% plan to start doing so in the near future.

When implemented as part of an end-to-end autonomous monitoring solution, drones make it easier than ever for companies to conduct inspections with the frequency needed to ensure the highest levels of safety, asset reliability and adherence to regulations. Without them, the next disaster is just a matter of time.

Get the full survey report here.

With emissions regulation tightening and public awareness of environmental issues growing, the oil and gas industry is under increasing pressure to up the ante when it comes to site inspections. At the same time, there’s the constant need to keep costs down and productivity up. The burning question is HOW?

Relying on what’s worked before is no longer enough. Legacy inspection techniques are labor-intensive, costly, and often put personnel at risk. And while there has been a lot of buzz about oil and gas inspection automation, it isn’t always clear how drones for the oil and gas industry are actually used, or what oil and gas inspection software is needed to enable full automation of both upstream and downstream oil and gas inspection.

To go beyond the buzz and make sense of it all, we’ve put together a list of five key use cases where automated drone inspection excels in meeting pressing challenges facing the oil and gas industry.

OGI Inspections

Oil and gas facilities have hundreds of assets, miles of piping, and thousands of connection points where leaks can occur at any time. Legacy oil and gas pipeline inspection requires a refinery inspection team of several employees and or contractors to cover such a wide range of assets. The inspections are extremely time-consuming, costly, and hazardous for the inspection team. Moreover, they don’t catch all the leaks, as even a large inspection team can’t be everywhere at once.

Autonomous drone inspection and remote ops dramatically reduces the time needed for inspections and offers an improved vantage point that helps detect leaks that would be missed using legacy inspection methods.  Utilizing the Percepto OGI system allows facilities to inspect more assets more often, with less personnel, and without putting employees in hazardous situations.

Power Distribution Inspection

Inspecting substation and power distribution systems is expensive, hazardous, and time-consuming. Yet insufficient inspection can lead to large single events and ongoing downtime events that can cost a facility hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.

Oil and gas inspection automation systems like Percepto’s reduce the time needed to conduct these inspections by 50% – 80%, which means that inspections can be conducted more frequently. In addition, the data collected in the inspections can be run through Percepto’s AIM software. This saves the process owner additional time in data review since it pinpoints the actionable insights needed to make smarter business decisions. The analytics also support preventative maintenance, detecting trends that can indicate a potential problem before it happens.

Time isn’t the only thing saved. The costs of traditional inspections and reports range from $50,000 to >$250,000, depending on the size of the facility. Automated drone systems like Percepto’s lower costs dramatically, which also helps support more frequent inspections that allow the site team to find anomalies before they fail, as well as track and trend potential anomalies. In fact, in some plants where the Percepto system is active, power distribution failures have decreased by more than 20%.

Floating Roof Inspection

Heavy rain or storm conditions can sink the floating roof system on above-ground tanks. To prevent this from happening, oil tank inspection staff must inspect the drains frequently. However, these hazardous height inspections are dangerous and time-consuming and therefore are not conducted as frequently as they should be, and subpar inspections often lead to failures.

Percepto’s drone-in-a-box can reduce drain inspection time by 80% – 90%,  which means that inspectors can increase their inspection frequency significantly and aren’t exposed to danger in the process. In addition, the inspections can be launched instantly, and the results given to the process owner in real time, enabling smarter, data-driven business decisions, and allowing them to respond to potential failure situations.

Emergency Response

One of the key challenges in emergency situations is getting accurate information to the decision-makers in real time. Inability to do so often leads to poor decision-making and inflated response times that can result in destruction, injuries, or even death.

Percepto’s drone-in-a-box can be remotely launched within minutes when an emergency arises, providing real-time visual, thermal, and gas detection data to the decision-makers and a constant live feed to facility and corporate personnel. When emergency response leaders have instant access to real-time data, they can make faster and better decisions, limit risk to personnel, and reduce potential damage to the facility. In addition, they can easily collaborate with corporate partners through the AIM software.

Flare Stack Inspection

A single flare failure can abruptly halt oil & gas facility operations, leading to production loss and unplanned expenditures, as well as major environmental damage. Yet legacy inspection methods require the flare to be shut down, which also leads to loss.

Drones for the oil and gas industry eliminate the need for plant shutdown with aerial inspections that can be done while the flare remains fully functional. When drones collect data, employees are kept out of harm’s way, and flare inspections take mere hours rather than days or weeks. The inspections, which utilize state-of-the-art thermal analysis software tools, can be conducted more frequently and improve sustainability by ensuring that pollutants aren’t released into the environment.

Advancing to better inspections and smarter data

Those five use cases are all critical areas where automated oil and gas drone inspection can significantly improve performance across every meaningful vector—safety, sustainability and environmental protection, productivity, and efficiency. Other use cases include heater and reactor inspections.

Yet no matter the use case, the need for autonomous monitoring and inspection in the oil and gas industry is clear. Given the tightening global environmental and safety standards, it gives companies a way to “future proof” their facilities and meet the demands of the modern world.  And since Percepto has now received the first-ever FAA waiver that allows drones to operate beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) without costly ground-based DAA systems or humans onsite, oil and gas companies can reap the benefits of remote autonomous operations from day one, without the delays of lengthy regulation approvals.

Anyone who has ever bought a new car knows the feeling—once the keys are in your hand, you can’t wait to take it out on the road. The same is true for companies who purchase a drone-in-a-box (DIB)—they want to start using it right away, without lengthy delays for regulatory approvals, and without having to buy additional expensive safety equipment. However, before the FAA issued a game-changing “true BVLOS” waiver for DIBs, there was no other option.

That changed for US based customers in May 2023, when the FAA issued a waiver that enables Percepto pilots to operate uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) in shielded airspace, without humans on site, and without expensive and cumbersome ground-based detect and avoid (DAA) systems such as radar systems. With the new waiver, there is no waiting period—companies can set up their drone and start using it right away. It’s the DIB equivalent of being able to drive your car out of the dealership lot the minute the salesperson hands you the keys.

Gathering speed: the progression of regulation

The current waiver wasn’t issued in a vacuum. The regulatory landscape is constantly evolving, and over the past several years, Percepto has been working closely with the FAA, proving the company’s dedication to safety and the reliability of the Percepto system. In fact, Percepto team members were active contributors in the landmark report by the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC), which helped pave the way for the current waiver.

Our work with regulators has become a process of cross-fertilization. As Christopher Doherty, Aviation Safety Inspector, FAA AFS-830 Special programs, said in the Percepto panel at Xponential 2023, “We’re asking industry to push us into more forward-thinking so we can stay ahead of the curve about getting all of these waivers out for these particular operations.”

Enter the era of “True BVLOS”

The latest waiver is truly revolutionary because it allows companies to conduct inspection and monitoring flights remotely, with a pilot located anywhere in the US, with no need for humans onsite or for detect and avoid (DAA) systems.

Under the waiver, low-risk “shielded” BVLOS operations are authorized 200 feet above and around assets located at critical infrastructure sites. And at non-critical infrastructure sites, shielded BVLOS operations are permitted 50 feet higher than the tallest obstruction located within a half-mile of the site.

Even the previous highly automated BVLOS waiver required either two people on-site – a pilot and a visual observer – or costly ground radar systems to ensure clear airspace. The current waiver eliminates those requirements, opening the door to major savings for anyone who operates any kind of critical or non-critical infrastructure in the United States.

This waiver, while nationwide, is currently limited to Percepto drones. It means companies operating a Percepto drone can conduct such BVLOS operations without having to apply for any special waivers or exemptions. They’re ready to fly from day one!

The new look of autonomous inspection

With true BVLOS, critical infrastructure located in remote areas can now be inspected with the same frequency and granularity as infrastructure anywhere, with minimal, or even zero, marginal cost, beyond the cost of the drone-in-a-box itself. A single control center located anywhere in the US can manage inspections of well heads, oil tanks, solar fields, pipelines, and more.

“In a manual operation, you send a pilot out to the field with a drone, with a payload, an optical gas imaging camera. They physically have to set everything up, do their safety procedures, cool the camera, do those inspections manually,” says Danny Allen, Geospacial Intelligence Supervisor, ConocoPhillips. “So, you’re driving back to the office, you’re uploading that data, and now you introduce a whole other aspect of reviewing all that data. So, we’re looking at about a three-day time span before we can inspect something and give a report. … [Now] we’re able to generate those reports, give those reports back to the team the next morning, and they can go and do the repairs.”

Michael Hull, Director of Generation Technology, Vistra Corps, agrees. “Solar sites are not staffed 24/7 by any stretch, two days at most. And we want those folks, when they’re out there turning wrenches, fixing things rather than having to do inspections…It used to be if we wanted to get inspection data and that good information about where our opportunities are, we had to pay for it. Now that we’re completely autonomous it’s changed to ‘how can I be flying these drones more frequently? What else can I be doing to generate value?’ rather than looking at how do I minimize the cost of my inspections. And that completely changes the model for what you’re going to do with an asset like this.”

Conclusion

The new “true BVLOS” waiver is ushering in a new era of completely remote ConOps for inspection and monitoring operations at critical and non-critical infrastructure sites nationwide. Any company can start leveraging that potential today, with Percepto.

Highlights from the Percepto panel discussion at Xponential 2023

How is the regulatory approach to drone inspections at industrial sites changing? How are some of the biggest industrial companies using drones? What’s the impact of moving to autonomous inspection, and how is that changing the value equation?

Four top inspection executives at Fortune 500 companies and an official with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) addressed those questions, and more, when they joined Percepto for a panel discussion at Xponential 2023. Their comments were riveting. For some top-level insights, read this summary of the highlights. Or watch the recording of the discussion to get the full picture from these thought leaders.  

 

Insights shared by:

• Chris Doherty, FAA – Aviation Safety Inspector, currently working for the AFS-830 Waiver Team evaluating complex Part 107 Waiver applications
• Heath McLemore, Florida Power & Light – Responsible for emerging UAS technology integrations, part of a team that conducts up to 400 UAS flights a day
• Michael Hull, Vistra Corp – Director of Generation Technology, responsible for technology at gas, coal, solar and storage sites
• Tim Shanfelt, Koch Ag and Energy Solutions – Director of Operations Transformation, focusing on digital transformation strategy
• Danny Allen, ConocoPhillips – Geospatial intelligence supervisor, oversees analysis, data, and intelligence

Discussion highlights

How is the FAA’s approach to waivers for infrastructure inspection evolving? 

The FAA’s Chris Doherty has been instrumental in working with Percepto and companies to streamline beyond visual line of site (BVLOS) regulations to facilitate safe industrial inspection. For example, on the eve of Xponential 2023, Percepto was granted the first-ever nationwide FAA waiver for true BVLOS operations in shielded airspace, without humans onsite and without expensive ground-based systems. 

Chris explained the FAA’s approach regarding this latest waiver, and waivers in general. He said that Xponential 2022, where he and his team met with Percepto and others and saw our infrastructure inspection solutions, was a turning point. 

Chris Doherty, FAA: 

“ We had sat down with you at your booth, Ariel, for about 45 minutes while we ran through all the aspects of your equipment. So what we took away from Xponential was we needed to do a better job. And so we started taking a really risk-based approach to this.  What’s the risk of somebody flying 200 feet next to a nuclear reactor? If that’s happening, we’ve got other issues, right? … And we’re asking the industry to actually push us more into forward-thinking so we can kind of stay ahead of the curve about getting all of these waivers out for these particular operations.”

 

How are industry leaders using drones for inspection? 

The industry panel members described their drone inspection activities, how that has evolved, and where they hope to go from here. Together, they paint a broad picture of some of the key use cases across varied industries.

Heath, Florida Power & Light: 

“Today, we’re running anywhere from 400 to 600 drone flights a day across, not just in Florida, but across the U.S. under our parent company, NextEra Energy Resources. So, the team’s quickly growing, we’re continuing to learn new things every day as we continue the path of the waivers and the future of highly autonomous drone operations.”

Michael, Vistra Corp: 

“For about three years, we’ve had a drone program exclusively on the fossil side, so coal plants, gas plants, primarily doing pre-outage inspections, just looking for maintenance activities that would need to be done, nothing very revolutionary. We also use it in our mining side to do pit progressions, but it’s with the solar and bringing on utility solar sides, is where we’re starting to see the expansion and growth.”

Danny, ConocoPhillips: 

“We own and operate our own substations and utility lines. Being able to inspect that infrastructure is critical to our operations. We kind of rolled into facility inspections, tower inspections, and now we’re doing fugitive emission inspections.”

Tim, Koch Ag & Energy: 

We use [drones] to eliminate the four Ds: the dirty, dangerous, difficult, and disinteresting work that the men and women in our plants have to do on a daily basis. That’s everything from battery limit blind inspections during turnarounds, lay down yard inspections, [to] security rounds.”

 

How have autonomous capabilities changed your inspection programs?

Freeing people to do other tasks rather than flying and managing drone missions. Getting actionable insights quickly. Being able to cost-effectively conduct inspections far more frequently. Improving safety. According to the panelists, those are just a few of the big differences felt when inspections go autonomous.

Tim, Koch Ag & Energy: 

“The autonomous side has really freed up a large chunk of that 4D work to just be scheduled work. … It’s all pre-programmed and it goes and flies, and it accomplishes those missions. And then when we have a one-off, we can either take our manual drones or we can manually fly the Percepto drone. That’s been big, because most of our folks at our plants have their day job, and drones typically are something that they do on the side. … They’re receiving the reports through the AIM system and the value is being generated that way instead of people having to be fully dedicated to being in a drone program.”

Danny, ConocoPhillips: 

“We go out, we spend all the time collecting this information, and then we give it to the teams to review, and they just don’t have the time or the capacity to review it. So this [autonomation] was more along the ways of optimizing efficiency, being able to give that data back to the business and make actionable insights.”

Danny also noted that the addition of optical gas imaging (OGI) during autonomous inspection missions has had a huge impact:

“In a manual operation, you send a pilot out to the field with a drone, with a payload, an optical gas imaging camera. They physically have to set everything up, do their safety procedures, cool the camera, do those inspections manually… So, you’re driving back to the office, you’re uploading that data, and now you introduce a whole other aspect of reviewing all that data. So, we’re looking at about a three-day time span before we can inspect something and give a report. … [Now] we’re able to generate those reports, give those reports back to the team the next morning, and they can go and do the repairs.”

Michael, Vistra Corp: 

“Previously, we would contract out [solar] inspections once a year … and we found there was way too much stuff going wrong for us to find in those inspections. So, we knew one year was way too infrequent to do an inspection over a solar field. Our contractor said, ‘Great, we could do it four times a year for four times the cost.’ [But] that’s not going to work. Autonomy allows us to flip the model of how you cost out an inspection.”

Heath, Florida Power & Light: 

“We’re always looking for ways to automate and replace … daily repetitive, redundant [tasks]. … And when doing that, [replacing] with automation, you can increase safety. … Whatever we can do to eliminate the human element is going to make that operation much safer. Also, you know, on our path to automating, now we’re able to potentially reduce the number of participants in a lot of our operations.”

 

How are BVLOS waivers enabling companies to scale their inspection programs?

With increasing FAA waivers relating to BVLOS, inspection is becoming more autonomous; less dependent on humans being onsite. The forum speakers shared how that is enabling them to scale their inspection programs and gain more value, going beyond time and cost savings. 

Michael, Vistra Corp: 

“The cost-per-inspection model has completely flipped. It used to be if we wanted to get inspection data and good information about where our opportunities are, we had to pay for it. … Now that we’re completely autonomous running out of [our control center in] Dallas. It’s changed to ‘how can I be flying these drones more frequently? What else can I be doing to generate value?’ … It allows us to truly scale across the country as we build out our portfolio of solar operations. … We’ve completely eliminated the marginal cost for doing the asset inspections out there.”

Tim, Koch Ag & Energy: 

“The flip of the concept of cost to value is huge. Instead of looking at the technology and the reports from a perspective of how much they cost, [asking] ‘how do we minimize cost?’, once you have the system in place, it’s ‘how can we continue to unlock more and more value?’. Once you start to look at the value side of the equation, there is infinitely more potential than the cost-cutting side. The automation and the BVLOS have helped us, and the regulatory framework has freed us up to start looking for more and more value opportunities.”

 

More insights

The discussion delved into more depth on each of the above questions. And it covered other hot topics in autonomous inspection, how autonomous inspection can improve employee safety, and experts’ tips for companies that are just getting started with a drone inspection program. You can see the full discussion here.

Market validation for drone-in-a-box technology is stronger than ever

“Are drone-in-a-box really a valuable, reliable tool for critical infrastructure and heavy industry?” Around 2015-2016, I used to get that question frequently from stakeholders looking for a much-needed solution to enhance safety and reliability for their organization. While the question was phrased politely, what I was really hearing was, “This technology is so new—does it really work?”

Fast forward to 2023, and I’m almost never asked that question. That’s because the market has provided a clear answer—a resounding yes! Market validation for drone-in-a-box (DIB) technology (also known as drone docks) can be seen everywhere: industry leaders are seeing real value and ROI from the technology, regulators are providing their stamp of approval, new use cases continue to emerge, and new players continue to join the market, most notably Skydio and DJI.

If you take a closer look at what the market is saying, first and foremost it recognizes the immense value DIB technology has to offer. The mainstream, consumer players joining the fast-growing market are a significant signal that there is value here, and the technology is here to stay.

Another huge market signal attesting to the value of the technology is the increasing scale of DIB deployment. Leading energy and heavy industry stakeholders are increasingly deploying tens, if not hundreds of drone-in-a-box solutions across their facilities and infrastructure. Here again, the market is saying this technology is valuable, and it’s also saying that it’s reliable—the questions I was asked in 2015 are no longer on the table.

Together with regulators providing advanced approvals to operate drone-in-a-box Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), like this nationwide approval for Percepto drones to operate BVLOS in the US, the market is putting its final stamp of approval on the drone-in-a-box. It’s safe enough to operate without a pilot, and safe to say organizations have a lot to gain by integrating drone docking stations in their workflows.

How to choose a drone docking station for heavy industry

The question is no longer whether critical infrastructure needs autonomous drone monitoring, but rather which of the market solutions best meets their needs.  Heavy industry and critical infrastructure facilities are complex, hazardous environments, and companies that manage sites with hazardous materials or provide power to thousands of residents have no room for error. They need solutions that are ruggedized and stable enough for 24/7/365 operations in harsh conditions.

Commercial drones for infrastructure monitoring must be available to function in that environment to ensure reliability, as well as capture and analyze data effectively to generate real-time actionable insights for every facility.

So, how do you choose the right autonomous drone and dock for your needs? Below are the seven key points to consider when investing in a drone docking station solution.

1. Is it field-proven?

Testing facilities never fully reflect real field conditions, and no amount of testing can replace extensive real-world experience in the air and on the ground. Two examples come to mind from Percepto’s work in the field that paint a clear picture of how real-world experience is critical when designing reliable solutions for heavy industry.

The first example is from the discovery stage of a drone-in-a-box deployment in 2015 for a client with harsh on-site winter weather conditions. At the time, our solution featured dual, top-facing doors which opened to both sides. During discovery, we learned that snow and debris would fall into the docking station whenever it opened.

This insight from the field led to the modification of Percepto’s drone docking station design to feature a single door that opens to one side. In addition to preventing snow, debris, sand, and dust from falling into the dock, having one door increases the overall solution reliability, eliminating redundant moving parts.

Another example of field insight was in the discovery stage of deployments in hot climates. Heat can make batteries and electric components less efficient. More critically, overheating poses a significant safety risk—if the battery or electric component overheats, it can lead to serious safety concerns or even the risk of explosions. That critical insight led to the addition of a full HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) unit that hooks up to Percepto’s drone dock and provides industrial-grade heating and cooling for enhanced safety, the only drone dock with this type of HVAC solution.

These are just two examples of many field-driven insights. Newcomers to the autonomous drone industry are just getting started in their discovery stages and need significant time to generate insights and make modifications. Percepto has racked up the most hours in the air at client sites—more than 5,000 hours in a wide variety of industries—giving Percepto a key advantage.

2. Is it ruggedized for outdoor use and set up for 24/7/365 availability?

Heavy industrial sites are often located in remote areas and exposed to extreme temperatures and harsh weather conditions including hurricanes, dust storms, and blizzards. The entire drone-in-a-box solution needs to be ruggedized and reliable enough to withstand conditions like high winds, remain available on site, and collect data, even in an emergency.

The ruggedized Percepto Air Base is the all-weather heavyweight champ. Sturdy and ruggedized, it is the only drone docking station currently available that is proven to check all the boxes for 24/7/365 operations in harsh conditions, including hurricane-level winds, rain and snow, dust, sand, salt, and extreme temperatures.

3. Is it regulation ready?

The key advantage of DIB technology is that it is fully unmanned. In order to leverage that advantage, you need regulatory approval to operate the drone “Beyond Visual Line of Sight” or BVLOS. These approvals are generally granted on a case-by-case basis, in a time-consuming, lengthy process. However, in an industry breakthrough, Percepto drones and drone docking stations were the first to receive nationwide BVLOS approval with no need to apply for individual approvals.

4. How does the drone communicate?

In order to operate autonomously, drones need reliable communication with their docking station at all times. However, in facilities under construction or remote PV farms and mines, Wi-Fi simply isn’t available and alternative communication solutions are a must. LTE, whether 4G or 5G, is the best option for unlimited outdoor drone communication,

Percepto Air drones, on the other hand, come with ready-to-launch LTE communications. They don’t require any new infrastructure on site, leveraging the key benefits of DIB as an autonomous, ready-to-go, easy solution.

5. Can it operate day and night?

Problems don’t sleep at night, and neither can drones. To maintain flight reliability and perform tasks that take place after dark, such as shutdown progress, an autonomous drone needs to be able to operate day and night, even in low visibility conditions. Percepto Air drones have that covered—they’re equipped with daylight and thermal cameras and are fully operational in both day and night.

6. Choose a company that can provide the payload you need

For critical infrastructure and heavy industry, you need a drone docking solution backed by industry experts with a deep understanding of industry-specific challenges, and the know-how to implement value-adding solutions for any use case.

For example, for oil & gas stakeholders, a major challenge faced on a daily basis is improving facility safety and reducing their carbon footprint. For these stakeholders, delivering an autonomous gas detection solution allows them to detect fugitive emissions safely and frequently, without sending employees into the field to perform hazardous inspections. Optical Gas Imaging (OGI) payloads on drones deliver just that solution, and are becoming a must-have tool for the industry.

Delivering a reliable, autonomous drone solution with OGI payload requires a high level of industry expertise. For example, OGI cameras detect the motion of gasses, and when placed on a moving drone, that can be a complex task. Currently, the Air Max OGI is the only drone-in-a-box solution on the market equipped with an OGI camera, and has already been deployed at several refineries to detect emissions frequently and safely.

Another great example of a critical payload to meet an industry-specific challenge comes from the energy and utilities industry. To detect thermal anomalies in critical infrastructure such as transmission and distribution lines, radiometric cameras, rather than thermal cameras, are a must. Radiometric cameras can evaluate multiple parameters at the pixel level including distance from the object, humidity, emissivity, and more. Here again, equipping drone-in-a-box with the right payload is critical to solving real-world challenges. Delivering a solution with radiometric cameras paired with powerful thermal image analysis software to energy and utilities allows them to detect thermal anomalies such as loose connections, faulty components, or insulation issues to prevent outages and deliver reliable power to communities.

7. Does the solution deliver automated insights and reports?

Getting the hardware right for 24/7 outdoor inspections—all the above-mentioned features and parameters from communications to ruggedness and payload—is the “easy” part. When done correctly, it enables frequent, reliable, and high-quality data collection.

But that’s not enough. To deliver actual value to stakeholders, you also need to manage and analyze the large quantity of data collected. From our experience working with Fortune 500 organizations worldwide, we learned that some, if not most of the stakeholders don’t even care how the data is collected. They just want a report in their inbox so they can maintain their infrastructure’s reliability and safety.

To enable automated reporting, you need advanced algorithms to deliver industry-specific insights, such as thermal anomaly detection to direct maintenance crews to faulty electric components in power grids, solar panels, or substations. You need a high level of expertise in the subject matter and use case at hand.

More critically, to develop working, industry-specific data analysis tools you need massive quantities of relevant field data.

In other words, you need to have a solution running at customer sites for years to feed and perfect your algorithms with real-world images and video.

Only one drone docking solution checks all the boxes

For critical infrastructure, drone docking stations are a must-have tool for 2023. The drone market has sent its strongest signals ever that the technology is mature, safe, and has immense value to offer. Having an on-site drone-in-a-box available for visual inspections 24/7/365  is critical to maintaining infrastructure reliability, safety, and sustainability. The question is no longer, “Do I really need this technology?,” but, “Which drone-in-a-box can provide the data and insights my organization needs?” And only one solution checks all the boxes.

Thermal imaging is not what I’d call ‘the new kid on the block’. After all, cameras that capture infrared images and allow temperatures to be read from the pixels have been around for a while. What has changed first and foremost, is the way thermal data is collected. More and more organizations are relying on drones to collect thermal data that can be used to monitor their infrastructure while looking for overheating components, thinning insulation, and more. As a result, the quantity of thermal data collected has increased significantly. Now the question is how to effectively review and analyze all that data. Clearly,  thermal data management and analysis software needs to become more sophisticated to keep up.

With the right tools for thermal imaging, you can visualize energy losses, identify problematic wiring, and so much more. All these issues are critical when it comes to increasing our infrastructure’s reliability and reducing its downtime.  In this blog, I’ll explain how Percepto AIM’s thermal image analysis software has transformed the way we manage and analyze thermal data collected by our drones.

 

Thermal image analysis before and after Percepto AIM

Before we started using Percepto AIM to manage and analyze our visual data, it was a challenge to ensure reliability and minimize downtime. Our drone operators would collect a lot of data, and then our team would have to upload it, sift through it, and use 3rd party software to analyze it.  With so many steps, some of the data never got analyzed. AIM changed everything.

• Cloud-based software: Before AIM, data captured was analyzed in on-premise software that required individual licenses. This significantly limited who had access to the analyzed data, especially with IT and security protocols in place. Simply put, having a cloud-based software makes it easy for anyone to use thermal tools and get the insights they need to do their job properly.
• One central repository for all data: We were using multiple softwares to analyze our data. For example, you can’t analyze data captured by DJI drones on FLIR’s platform.  Now, all our data – whether from Percepto drones, DJI, or FLIR—is in one place. And it doesn’t need to be moved to other locations or tools for analysis, which is a big time saver. More critically, it provides a holistic picture of our infrastructure, as all the data is managed side by side.
• Advanced AI-powered analytics: Then, it was a matter of analyzing the data and making a report. To be honest, when we were manually analyzing data – a good chunk of it wasn’t being analyzed. Especially when it involved a power grid, which has TONS of data. Now, we can use Percepto AIM to analyze the data and have AIM automatically generate reports. The real game changer for us is Percepto AIM’s anomaly detection. The advanced algorithm compares the most recent thermal data collected to previous data, and detects any temperature differentials we define as critical.
• Intuitive software: Before, we had to slog through the data and manually tag any problem with the asset where it was found. Now, all that data is automatically uploaded and geotagged on a geospatial map of our site. AIM software makes it easy to find what you’re looking for, see how it’s changed over time by comparing it to past inspections, or get detailed information on exactly where and how severe the problem is.

Let’s take a closer look at the software itself.

 

Why you need an advanced thermal image analysis software

It wasn’t enough for me just to have thermal tools that solve data bottlenecks for my organization. They had to be advanced tools that would help us identify temperature changes so we could prevent outages. With AIM, it was clear we were getting high-quality thermal analysis, empowering us with the temperature-based insights we needed to boost reliability and reduce downtime.

To give you a taste, here are just a few of the advanced features you get with Percepto AIM:

Automated analytics – Percepto AIM software offers advanced data analytics by using machine learning algorithms to analyze large amounts of thermal data collected. It’s an end-to-end solution that provides real-time data visualization and actionable insights, enabling us to make data-driven decisions and improve operational efficiency. For example, AIM saves us huge amounts of time by generating reports and identifying anomalies like hot spots or detecting extreme temperatures on electrical equipment. Now, we can initiate proactive maintenance on things like loose connections, faulty components, or insulations issues–before they cause serious damage or outages.

 

Thermal tools – If you want to analyze the data further for yourself, Percepto AIM offers a wide range of thermal tools. Here are some highlights:

• Color palette: Select the palette you want to use for the displayed image, whether inferno, white hot, black hot, artic or other variations.
• Temperature range: Annotated measurements let you select the temperature range to display.
• Spot measurement: Place a pin in any spot on the image to see and label its temperature.
• Box measurement and comparison: Create a box and have AIM automatically calculate and display the differential for the lowest and highest temperatures, or compare it to the temperature for a spot outside the box.
• Emissivity and reflected temp: Set the reflected temperature and emissivity level to accurately represent temperatures based on the properties of materials.
• Annotate and share: Mark any issues directly on the image, then share with any stakeholder in your organization.

 

Ensuring infrastructure reliability

Percepto AIM’s unmatched data management and thermal image analysis software offers a powerful solution for enhancing preventive maintenance and ensuring the reliability of any infrastructure. By automating insight and report generation, AIM enables organizations to identify faults at their earliest stages – before they escalate into large-scale failures.

With Percepto AIM, organizations across sectors such as energy, mining and storage and processing are minimizing the occurrence of large-scale failures. It’s saving them millions, and preventing serious safety and environmental implications. And of course, by keeping their assets in top shape, companies can better guarantee the critical infrastructure reliability their customers depend on.

 

Percepto AIM is a must-have software solution – for thermal image analysis and more

Percepto AIM has changed the way my organization deals with thermal data, enabling improved data workflows AND high quality analytics. The new, more efficient processes give us actionable insights that translate directly into optimized preventative maintenance, improved reliability and heightened safety.

With the simplified inspection and monitoring process, we’re also benefiting from enhanced environmental monitoring, increased productivity and unparalleled efficiency. Percepto AIM is a multi-mission solution. We came for the thermal image analysis tools, and gained the bonus of anomaly detection, volumetric measurements, advanced data management, and much more.

Ask for a demo to see how Percepto AIM can reshape your organization’s visual and thermal inspections!

Efficient, frequent, automated visual inspections hold the key to reducing carbon footprints and ramping up green energy production. If it isn’t already part of your organization’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) toolbox – well, it should be. 

Visual inspections are critical to ensure your site’s assets are in good condition, monitor for unwanted emissions and environmental infractions, and to monitor green energy facility construction to meet deadlines. And automation is poised to help overcome the visual inspection challenges faced by today’s heavy industry. Challenges such as how to safely inspect for fugitive emissions, or how to manage large quantities of visual data are being tackled easily by automating and digitizing previously manual processes.  

Energy and heavy industry stakeholders are combining robotics and advanced software and fully automating visual inspections, meeting their ESG goals in three main ways: 

1. Frequently and safely detect fugitive emissions with autonomous OGI inspections
2. Gain real-time visibility to their site health and find failures before they escalate into safety and environmental disasters (think forest fires caused by electric grid failure) 
3. Scale up green energy facility construction with the most advanced software for construction tracking. 

 

Reducing environmental damage using autonomous OGI drone inspections 

Optical Gas Imaging (OGI) sensors are able to detect volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and have been transforming the way Oil & Gas players are detecting leaks and fugitive emissions. But using an OGI camera manually, on the ground or mounted on piloted drones, is inefficient and often unsafe – exposing employees to hazardous emissions. Moreover, relying on the availability of certified OGI experts reduces inspection frequency, leaving potential leaks undetected. 

One eco-focused solution from Percepto uses autonomous drone inspection to check for gas emissions and leaks near equipment. Using advanced optical gas imaging (OGI) payloads, self-piloted drones can accurately inspect equipment at oil and gas sites, to detect pollution or leaks in a way that is far safer and more accurate than manual inspections. 

The Percepto Air Max OGI drone-in-a-box, resides permanently on site, always ready for gas inspection, and is the only autonomous drone drone-in-a-box (DIB) solution with an integrated onboard OGI camera. A DIB deployed on site can deliver OGI inspections at any facility multiple times a day. It’s not affected by the weather or subject to operator experience or skills, and comes with guaranteed reliability. By conducting daily emission inspections, Oil & Gas players can detect methane emissions early on, reduce the risk of incidents and significantly cut down their carbon footprint. For the first time ever, they can become aware of leaks as they happen and can respond quickly and safely, without risking personnel or the environment. 

 

Going proactive: enhancing preventive maintenance to prevent environmental and safety disasters

Effective and frequent preventive maintenance is critical for organizations to maintain asset health and reliability. For heavy infrastructure, the stakes of performing efficient preventive maintenance are high. Think for example of an aging power grid that can catch fire, or a remotely located chemical plant with highly-concentrated waste that could spill. The list goes on and on, with risk of oil leaks, spills, fires and floods – but it isn’t all doom and gloom. 

Globally, organizations face preventive maintenance challenges ranging from limited workforce availability, high inspection costs, to manual inspection safety concerns. And as a result, inspections are often performed infrequently, or even reactively.

Companies today are leveraging automated inspection to tackle these challenges, and as a result are boosting inspection frequency across their infrastructure. Percepto AIM revolutionizes the way organizations perform preventive maintenance inspections, with fully automated inspections conducted at the push of a button from anywhere in the world. Remote, AI-powered inspections, powered by on-site autonomous drone-in-a-box, catch failures as they happen, with AIM’s cutting edge anomaly detection algorithm automatically detecting infrastructure failures down to 0.3cm in size. With on-site drone-in-a-box performing inspections on a daily basis, effective preventive maintenance strategies can be implemented, fixing small faults before they might turn into large-scale disasters. 

As an added bonus, with fully unmanned inspections, employees are no longer exposed to risky inspections. During day-to-day operations, manual inspections may entail climbing icy towers, going up on scaffolding, or being exposed to harmful chemicals or emissions. And during an emergency, the ability to gain situational awareness before sending in repair crews is critical for employee safety.

 

Streamlining solar farm construction to scale up green energy production 

Automating inspection is the ideal way to reduce carbon footprint, but is often overlooked as a solution to help scale up green energy production. Going green requires inspection to get plants up and running AND to prevent problems once they are operational. The average 50MW solar farm construction project is delayed by 20%, costing energy companies an average of $2M per project. With companies managing multiple large construction projects and contractors at once, those numbers and pains only grow. Regular visual inspection with close up monitoring and reports can help overcome the challenges facing solar sites, including making sure the site is being built as designed, managing multiple contractors, managing multiple construction projects, and more. 

Before turning to Percepto, one major energy company reported that their contractors provided daily construction progress updates on a post-it note! With no choice but to rely only on the contractors’ manual updates, the company had very little oversight on structural site planning, deliveries, and daily installations. In one contractor “mix up” during the civil construction phase, the stormwater controls weren’t built according to plan, which resulted in water damage to nearby communities and setting the project back significantly. 

AIM software helps optimize and streamline solar construction for groundwork, construction, commissioning, and operation and maintenance – comparing as-built to planned and tracking daily progress. 

Percepto’s AIM software package for solar construction monitoring delivers daily, AI-powered progress reports, and includes C-level tools allowing companies to effectively manage multiple projects at once – from any off-site location. The features include object counting, reports for as-built versus planned, construction progress tracking, daily reports, terrain mapping, and data analytics. 

Once the site is  built, the autonomous drones can optimize the maintenance of solar and wind farms. Fitted with a thermal imaging camera as payload, these drones regularly fly over the farm sites to identify any problems with solar panels or turbines by conducting visual analytics based on infrared radiation patterns. Everything is done remotely with the push of a button, eliminating the time and effort required to have engineers manually inspect the area.

 

Are you adding autonomous inspections to your ESG toolbox in 2023?

Automating site inspections and monitoring allows energy companies to easily incorporate  preventative maintenance that can minimize disaster, cut down on carbon emissions AND scale up green energy facility construction. 

Book a demo to find out exactly how Percepto can help your business meet ESG goals and power up responsible environmental activities.

In the wake of a boom in renewable energy, energy companies must scale up in order to meet increasing demands. This has made construction timelines and the reliability of energy production more imperative than ever before.

Here’s the thing. The average solar construction project is delayed by about 20% with the consequences hovering around $2M in costs. For example,  according to the EIA (US Energy Information Administration), about 20% of the solar photovoltaic capacity that was planned from January through June 2022 didn’t go online as scheduled.

More often than not, current methods to meet construction deadlines fall short because they are usually done manually, inconsistently, infrequently, and mainly rely on third-party vendors. 

Manual, ad-hoc solar construction monitoring is causing you delays

• Accurate surveying for project planning is vital to ensuring that solar plants reach their full potential. For example, the location and plan for PV installations will impact how much energy a plant produces during its lifetime. Planning that is based on high resolution terrain mapping, as well as shade analysis, will ensure maximized yield and long-term profitability. 

• Compliance with plans during construction is performed primarily by field engineers who manually compare drawings to make sure as-built is according to design plans. Because many engineers are supervising multiple construction projects, sometimes in remote rural locations, deviations from the design are often caught when it’s already too late to correct. 
• Monitoring  the progress  of construction means keeping track of the deadlines, budgets, plans, and regulations of projects. Since many construction managers are in charge of multiple projects (or one huge project) they often rely on third-party updates from contractors and subcontractors. These tend to be done using paper spreadsheets or online ones, and are difficult to keep track of when so many vital details need to be charted. 
• Enforcing warranties during commissioning kick starts only once solar panels are generating electricity for the first time, because these types of faults are not visible to the naked eye. In order to detect malfunctioning panels, a thermal inspection needs to take place, and the data needs to be analyzed to detect thermal anomalies. Only then can warranties be claimed, based on geospatial records of all anomalies detected. 
• Managing the masses of data that come from different sources, tools, and applications is a must for any company that wants to follow regulations, identify problems before they cause damage or failure, understand which parts of the project are on schedule and what areas are experiencing problems.

A single sophisticated software can streamline the entire process

Percepto AIM is a cloud-based software that manages all visual data captured by drones or any other visual sensor, on a digital twin of your site. It serves as a centralized repository of data for all your solar farms, from pre-construction to operations, and automates the transformation of the captured data into actionable information.

Working behind the scenes, but accessed from an intuitive dashboard, AIM helps optimize and streamline solar construction for groundwork, construction, commissioning, and operation and maintenance. 

• Engineering – AIM mapping tools generate 2D maps and 3D point clouds, mapping the terrain for site surveying and planning. To accurately estimate and monitor earthwork, AIM data analysis tools can produce detailed reports that measure slopes and pile volumes, as they change over time.
• Construction – AIM software provides visibility into what is happening on your site and tracks construction progress on a daily basis–even from remote locations. The software object counting algorithms don’t only count objects but also segment them according to type. It can share detailed updates on how many poles or panels are installed each day, and generate updates on progress vs. goals, all on a dedicated dashboard. In addition to detailed progress reports sent to all stakeholders on a daily basis, the construction progress is also displayed on a map timeline, where you can not only track progress in numbers but also in geolocation, as all data is displayed on a geospatial map of your site. 
• Commissioning – Once the electrical stage of construction is complete, the site is ready to start producing electricity. Percepto AIM data analysis tools produce detailed PV anomaly reports, accurate to the cell level, on a geospatial map of your site.  This makes it easy to streamline warranty enforcement and hand over a fully operational site. 

Meet increasing green energy demands with Percepto AIM 

For solar asset owners and EPC contractors, meeting the increasing demands for green energy poses several new challenges. And when scaling up construction to meet those demands, having one, easy-to-use software platform is key to staying on top of your projects.