While Hollywood is all about drama, it is true that oil or gas refineries are potentially dangerous places. For employees, nearby residents and the environment alike, risks like hazardous chemicals, leaks and fires pose a serious threat. But, while Hollywood is all about doom and gloom, today’s refineries are redefining the way they manage risks.

The most innovative oil and gas companies are ramping up inspections and quality control on critical assets and infrastructure, constantly monitoring for failures, leaks and potential hazards. But instead of sending in employees to perform these inspections, autonomous robots are dispatched – with site employees safely monitoring from their laptops.

Delek US for example, is reframing the way their refineries are managed. Their program, refinery of the future, aims to integrate several disruptive technologies such as autonomous drones, to make their refineries more productive, safer and more environmentally friendly. 

Why refinery inspection and maintenance is so critical

For any industrial facility, inspections empower preventive maintenance, which minimizes failures and costly downtime. So, the more frequently you inspect your facility, and the higher quality inspections you implement, the more productive your facility will be – translating to millions of dollars per year. A refinery is no exception. A typical refinery with around 75K barrels of crude oil per day throughput capacity stands to see around $2M in ROI by optimizing their site inspections.  

Automating refinery inspections is critical because: 

• Manual inspections are timely, costly, infrequent and often ineffective – yet many oil & gas refineries still rely on this “tried and true” method to monitor their facilities.
• A refinery is a hazardous work environment, and safety is a top priority. Sending an employee out for regular inspections and repairs is risky, and requires special approvals and work permits.
• Companies strive to ensure their refineries are energy efficient, with minimal impact in areas such as air pollution, water usage and waste.

Keep your employees and your facility safe with automated inspections

A simple inspection of a refinery including the oil tanks, flares, pipes, etc. can be dangerous for employees. By using autonomous drones and robots for inspection, employees can be kept out of harm’s way and focus on other aspects of their job.

Meanwhile, drones and robots conduct a thorough inspection. They can quickly and safely inspect tanks, confirming tank integrity – inspecting for dents, unclosed hatches, leaks, objects on the rooftops, corrosion, fenceline monitoring, etc. Besides inspecting for leaks of roofs and pipes, drones and robots do a general sweep of a facility, inspecting the ground and surrounding water for oil sheens. Pipe inspection analyzes structural integrity and detects leaks and temperature discrepancies that may suggest an error.

With live streaming of inspections, site managers don’t even have to be physically present on-site to stay on top of all pertinent activity at the oil and gas refinery.  In addition, Percepto’s drones and robots automatically provide insights and generate data that is available for stakeholders’ review, regardless of where they are.

Authorized users can also review all past missions, reports and maps stored on the cloud. This helps personnel track potential issues and note relevant changes on the ground to assess needs.

Save time, increase productivity and minimize environmental footprint

Not only is sending an employee out for regular inspections and repairs risky, but it time consuming. Due to the risk involved, refineries often require special approvals and work permits to allow an employee to safely inspect a tank for example. That means they need to prove an inspection is required, put in the request, and wait for the inspection to be scheduled. All of this is time-consuming, often leads to ad-hoc inspections, and takes up valuable employee time.  

Our calculations conclude that autonomously inspecting critical oil and equipment gas for mechanical integrity can result in a 90% time savings, leading to significantly reduced costs and increased productivity. Plus, more frequent site inspections ensures site assets are in top shape, reducing risk of costly delays and shutdowns.  

By having frequent inspections and staying on top of matters, refineries can minimize their environmental footprint.  Maintenance teams can quickly respond to issues and keep the refinery operating as energy efficient as possible. This maximizes uptime and streamlines environmental compliance. 

Automated inspections in action at Delek US refinery 

In 2020, Delek US, a downstream energy company with assets in multiple areas including petroleum refining, integrated Percepto drones. This is part of their goal of building the refinery of the future by investing and integrating advanced technologies and management tools. They said of the drones, “These drones keep us from climbing high towers; they go inside vessels, check on floating roofs in the tank farm, and observe pipeline routes.” All of this minimizes safety risks for employees.

Percepto drones bring Delek US actionable insights via monitored data across a range of tough industrial settings. They also use drones to perform remote infrastructure inspection and anomaly detection multiple times per day and/or night of petroleum refineries.

Plus, autonomous robots can be invaluable when emergencies arise as they provide facility safety and response teams unparalleled situational awareness.  Emergencies can be tracked and monitored without putting site employees in harm’s way, thus keeping them safe. Delek US views the Percepto drone as part of their emergency response program and has found they offer them better visibility, better decisions, and better safety.

Incorporating the drone into the emergency response program has led to a boost in employee morale at Delek US. “Between our cross functional team of volunteers from Maintenance, Environmental, EMS, Engineering and Operations, you could tell the pride in this exciting new program is tremendous!” 

Automated inspections are accurate. Because they can be done quickly and easily, inspections typically happen more frequently.  And the benefits – keeping employees and the refinery safer, increased productivity, and minimizing a refineries’ environmental footprint – are many. Plus, drones and robots are instrumental during emergency situations and can help limit the damage. It’s no wonder that top oil and gas companies are automating inspections at their refineries.

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The coronavirus has exposed the soft underbelly of critical infrastructure and industrial sites worldwide – workforce availability. As more and more companies implement business continuity plans to deal with the outbreak, fewer and fewer employees are able to fully function. When facilities don’t know who can and will show up for work, both planning and operations are seriously impeded. In Western Australia, for example, the coronavirus is potentially affecting some 60,000 fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) workers at remote mine sites and onshore and offshore oil and gas plants.

And this challenge is compounded by a flagging demand for commodities – oil, natural gas, ore, and other resources – as global industries and economies slow down or even grind to a halt. Given the ongoing price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia and the resulting price drops – the oil industry is particularly hard-hit, with companies bracing for lower revenues, diminished investment, and even large-scale layoffs.

Thus, even as companies are unable to produce at full capacity, they are also unable to sell at full capacity – leading many to take a much closer look at current and future operational expenses and efficiency.

This is leading many companies to rethink the role that autonomous technology – and specifically autonomous drones – can and should be playing in their operations.

Autonomous Drones: A Quarantine-Proof Team Member

Large industrial sites are high-value assets that require constant maintenance and monitoring – independent of both production volumes and market conditions. Even when production is slowed or stopped, and when maintenance personnel are unable to function or even show up at work – critical components still need to be closely monitored, security perimeters need to be maintained, and scheduled maintenance needs to be conducted. The alternative to such monitoring and maintenance can be not only costly but also deadly.

Autonomous drones are an essential part of the contingency plans that support business continuity. Drones are always available, even if operators are under quarantine, and can help alleviate the challenges associated with volatile market trends and workforce availability. 

Multi-mission autonomous drones like Percepto’s can conduct security, safety and inspection missions – and be quickly and flexibly re-tasked to meet changing operational demands. This makes them a force multiplier – since a single person operating autonomous drones can replace multiple security, safety and inspection employees. 

Moreover, Percepto autonomous drones can be controlled remotely, from anywhere in the world. This means that – as long as companies have suitable regulatory permits – employees can work from home, yet operate autonomous drones as if they were on site. 

Finally, even when a near-pandemic is not sweeping the globe – multi-mission, on-site autonomous drones have been proven to increase efficiency and reduce operational costs. By delivering consistent visual asset monitoring, autonomous drones provide true data-driven maintenance, which according to one study can result in up to 45% less downtime and up to 60% greater output or production. Without costly human pilots, autonomous drones provide a massive boost to existing efforts to improve preventative maintenance and reduce unexpected downtime – which can dramatically affect the bottom line in the best of times and help organizations better deal with the loss of revenues in the worst.

The Bottom Line

Although coronavirus will not, thankfully, be the new normal – it should be a business continuity wake up call. To adapt to the fluctuations of a truly global marketplace, companies need to prepare for all contingencies – including those where human employees cannot fulfill their roles on-site. Investment in autonomous technology today can help critical infrastructure and industrial companies smooth operational and financial bumps in the road both today and in the future.

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The further forward we go, the further back we have to explore in order to go forward again. ~~ Stephen Gardiner

The successes of the autonomous drone industry in the previous decade planted the seeds of what promises to be another astonishing decade. In the spirit of Stephen Gardiner, a renowned architect and author, it’s always worth taking a look at what we’ve accomplished as an industry and a company. But it’s even more worthwhile drilling down into what we’re going to accomplish.

2019 – A Memorable Year for Autonomous Drone Flight

The autonomous drone industry took a giant leap forward in March of 2019 when a Percepto drone made the first autonomous drone flight over a 5G network. This came about as a result of our close collaboration with SK Telecom, the largest mobile operator in the Republic of Korea. And it laid important foundations for the wider adoption of autonomous drones, as more countries roll out their own next generation mobile networks and can reap the benefits of high-resolution video in real-time.

Percepto also pushed the boundaries of the autonomous drone industry with a number of technological breakthroughs in 2019. We launched the next-generation of our AI-powered autonomous industrial Drone-in-a-Box (DIB), which is already flying operationally in a wide range of weather conditions – from the hot and humid air of Mexico to the frigid and snowy Midwestern US. Our newest solution boasts seamless integration of 2D mapping and 3D modeling for the autonomous creation of valuable data assets, and also automatically generates reports with both in real-time and post-mission insights – facilitating true data-driven decision making. With safety always a top priority, we also recently added a built-in safety parachute for the drone.

These innovations did not go unrecognized. We were thrilled to see Percepto ranked in the 20 most promising drone technology solution providers of the year by CIO Review, as well as shortlisted for the prestigious Security Technology Innovation of the Year Award. Customers noticed, too. In 2019, we dramatically expanded our industrial footprint into diverse sectors across four continents and ten countries – providing aerial insights that improve operations, maintenance, safety, security and regulatory compliance for companies in mining, oil & gas, solar and thermoelectric power.

We also saw serious progress this year in what has long been a major impediment to the industrial drone market: regulation. By working collaboratively with end-user organizations and regulators in the past year, we received Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) waivers in various countries including the US, Mexico, Singapore, Portugal Israel, and Italy – and we expect to obtain many more in the coming years.

Finally, in 2019 the market potential for industrial drone technology did not escape the attention of the investor community, and we saw numerous multi-million dollar investments. One such announcement was in May, when Percepto closed $15M Series A round of funding, led by USVP with participation from NHN, Spider Capital and Emerge.

2021 and Beyond – The Future of Autonomous Drone Flight

Investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts the global drone industry will be worth $100 billion within the next 12 months. Other analysts predict drones and drone-related technologies will contribute some $82 billion to the US economy alone by 2025 and create some 100,000 new jobs. In 2020 and beyond, the quantum leap the drone industry is going to experience will be facilitated through a combination of innovation, investment in infrastructure and regulatory change.

• Regulatory Tipping Point  

Possibly the most significant development we expect in 2020 and beyond will be in the regulatory arena. This year will be the tipping point, especially in the US, where the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has signaled a landmark shift towards blanket approval for tested systems. With the FAA and other agencies like the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) in Australia moving from a waiver per site approach to a company-wide/system-based approval process, regulatory hurdles are diminishing. This alone has the potential to encourage organizations to accelerate their drone deployment strategies.

• Unmanned Traffic Management Systems (UTM)

More drones mean busier skies, necessitating Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM), especially in congested urban environments where BVLoS delivery drones will operate with greater frequency. Advanced UTM systems take an approach similar to that being developed for autonomous vehicles on our roads – whereby the speed and position of each vehicle is constantly shared with the system. A beta UTM system was launched in 2019, a prototype UTM system is slated to be built in Japan in early 2020, and many other countries are working on their UTMs as well.

• Masses of Data Require AI-Powered Analysis

Another springboard for the autonomous drone industry will be the implementation of AI-powered analysis tools. With autonomous drone solutions able to make multiple flights daily, the volume of visual data they collect is immense. In order to harness this data and glean the insights that can impact many levels of an organization, more powerful analysis tools are required. Already we’re seeing powerful artificial intelligence and machine learning being applied to drone-generated data, and advances in this field will continue throughout 2020.

• 5G Networks

Finally, the continuing rollout of 5G networks will fundamentally change the way we access and use drone-generated data and visuals. The impact of these next generation mobile networks on the adoption and application of autonomous drone technology (as well as other autonomous vehicles) cannot be overstated. The improvements in speed are game-changing compared to even the fastest 4G available. For example, Verizon is suggesting peak data rates of 10 gigabits per second across its 5G Ultra Wideband network.

Our own testing with SKT demonstrated that autonomous flights over 5G networks deliver numerous operational advantages, such as better real-time video stream quality and reduced battery consumption. This means drones will be able to stay in the air for longer and travel farther; process more data, more quickly; and relay more powerful insights back faster.

The Bottom Line

2019 was a watershed year in the autonomous drone industry, and there’s every indication that 2020 and beyond will see greater technological advancement, wider adoption, smarter regulation, and more powerful analysis capabilities. At Percepto, we’re looking forward to the future where the sky is truly the limit!

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Renewable energy is the key to a cleaner, brighter energy future. And solar is one of the most promising global sources of renewable energy. It’s cheaper (and arguably cleaner) than nuclear, coal, or combined cycle gas turbines – and that’s why we’re seeing an increasing number of utility-scale solar parks popping up across the globe.

Yet, large-scale operations in the harsh environments most suitable to solar electricity production are challenging. Remote, geographically dispersed, and sparsely manned – park construction, operations and maintenance are complex and costly. The components of solar power generation systems are surprisingly fragile – subject to mechanical and technical failure, wear and tear, and even vandalism and theft. 

Moreover, to maintain competitive pricing, solar energy producers need to be ever vigilant about their bottom line. They are constantly seeking ways to improve efficiency, lower CAPEX and OPEX, safeguard technology investments and – most importantly – maximize energy output. 

Current Technology Helps…But Not Enough

There is technology out there to assist solar farm operators in monitoring key points of failure – some created especially for solar power generation, like smart metering. Others include piloted drone solutions or solutions that facilitate or document manual inspection. Yet these solutions lack the accuracy and scope that enable park operators to keep a finger on the pulse of multiple sites comprising hundreds of thousands of moving parts.

• Manual inspection regimes send field engineers physically connect meters to individual modules, searching for underperforming components. The problem here is time – in industrial scale solar farms, a facility-wide inspection can take months or even years to complete, even as revenue is lost owing to undetected module failures – and the cost of the teams of engineers. 

• Human-piloted drones equipped with cameras can be used to scan each site for defects. Yet, flying these drones is labor-intensive and monitoring video feeds is highly subjective. One operator oversight can result in thousands of lost kilowatt hours in production. Moreover, a single day of monitoring for a large solar site can cost thousands of dollars.

Enter Autonomous Drones

Autonomous drones make solar energy farms more productive, more cost-effective, and more secure. An on-site autonomous drone system facilitates continuous and automatic oversight of the full range of solar park operations – even hard-to-reach or remote areas in unmanned facilities.

In our new industry paper (aptly titled ‘Autonomous Drones for Efficient and Secure Solar Energy Production’ and downloadable here), we present an in-depth use case for autonomous drone systems in solar parks. Here are just a few of the reasons many solar park operators and stakeholders are turning to advanced autonomous drone technology:

SAFE, CONTINUOUS, EFFICIENT SITE CONSTRUCTION

Ambitious and binding renewable energy targets have resulted in massive construction of solar farms, and contractors are under pressure to complete construction and move to production in record times. Facility commissioning dates are fixed, and delays in solar farm qualification and acceptance can result in high penalties. Autonomous drones drive CAPEX savings during solar farm setup, enabling safer and more efficient construction, and facilitating site delivery and acceptance by:

• Monitoring actual progress on a daily and hourly basis to optimize construction
• Detecting safety issues during complex construction involving multiple workers and heavy equipment
• Providing aerial data during construction and positioning of solar panels, surveying, and terrain mapping
• Providing timely alerts of construction bottlenecks to enable corrective action that minimizes delays

WARRANTY ENFORCEMENT

Solar panels are a significant and long-term investment which is covered by warranty, as well as production and performance guarantees. Consistent aerial monitoring can ensure warranty coverage and support warranty claims, by:

• Efficiently providing end-of-construction inspection reports confirming panel integrity and proper operation 
• Mitigating risks of undetected faulty equipment, breakage or underperformance that might affect warranty coverage

CONTINUOUS MONITORING OF SITE PRODUCTIVITY

O&M for industrial solar farms is complex and costly. Where the need to control CAPEX in the construction phase is clear, tighter operational monitoring and control can have a major impact on the OPEX of solar energy production. Autonomous drone systems offer better maintenance and fault detection at a lower cost — reducing overall site OPEX and turbocharging ROI. Percepto’s autonomous drones feature a dual payload that enables combined visual, thermal, and radiometric solar panel monitoring and detection for:

• Ensuring optimal temperature, angle and reception
• Conducting frequent inspections – regular, pre-planned or ad-hoc
• Enabling 24/7 monitoring without additional pilot expenses
• Minimizing electrical component failure by conducting regular checks of multiple individual cells, diodes, junction boxes, modules, strings, combiners, trackers (ensuring correct panel tilt or angle) and inverters
• Mitigating suspected Potential Induced Degradation (PID) or physical obstacles to production such as shadowing, soiling, cracking, and delamination

…and more…download the full Industry Deep Dive Paper here!

The Bottom Line

The future of solar power depends on keeping production high and OPEX low. Autonomous drones facilitate both of these goals – without costly staffing increases, and with a previously unobtainable level of accuracy and efficiency. The future of solar power looks far brighter from above!

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In many industries, such as renewable energy, mining, port and sea terminals and utilities operations, safety incidents can lead to serious organizational accidents, as well as potentially fatal harm.

With the presence of complex, large and expensive equipment on these sites, safety comes down to consistency and accuracy. Unfortunately, human error has proven to be the cause of breakdowns in process, safety and protocol in as much as 80 to 90% of accidents.

Whether these accidents are due to skill-based, action-based, memory-based or knowledge-based errors, modern companies must address the consistent safety issues caused by relying on human teams in increasingly automated, technology-filled operations.

Instead of relying on more training and placing a greater stress on incident prevention to prevent inevitable human errors, companies should embrace autonomous drone technology to ensure that their operations and employees are safer and more capable of doing their jobs.

Where Humans Fall Short

Even with the best training and detailed protocols, human safety workers are still susceptible to considerably higher error rates than autonomous drones.

Neuroscience tells us that rather than responding to what is actually happening in real-time, humans – especially when distracted – have a habit of responding to what we expect to see. This means that when every second counts in quickly evolving scenarios involving safety, we’re slower to react to the reality of the situation.

This is true regardless of how safety scenarios and protocols are organized, making it difficult for companies to mitigate the natural dangers to human safety inspectors and response teams during crisis situations.

Even systems that involve human-piloted drones are susceptible to human-error risks because they are only as accurate as their operators. Pilots have a difficult time operating drones once they’re out of their direct line of sight, adding to the possibility of slow or error-prone interpretations of safety risks when accurate details are crucially important.

Whether safety inspections or responses are carried out in person or by human-piloted drones, manned teams and the individuals on those teams are vulnerable to a number of distractions that make the likelihood of human error even greater:

• Stress;
• Sleep deprivation;
• Conditions outside of training expectations;
• Distraction from social media;
• Inability to understand new, evolving threats from novel technology;
• Indifference or carelessness;
• Insufficient security expertise; and
• Failure to follow security procedures and protocols correctly.

By including drones in a company’s safety strategy, teams are able to take a step back in crisis situations and evaluate the best reactions and future prevention using data provided by autonomous drone systems that is accurate, consistent and timely.

How Autonomous Drones Can Pick Up Our Slack

Even at its lowest point since 2003, there were 182 work-related fatalities in 2016 alone in Australia, compared to just 152 drone accidents in the last decade. Additionally, most of these drone accidents were related to non-autonomous system issues, such as loss of communication and radio signals between human pilots and their drones.

Unlike human-piloted systems, autonomous drones don’t face the same susceptibility to accidents from loss of communication with pilots. Instead, the ability to carry out pre-scheduled missions for safety inspections and automatically respond to safety incidents such as fires, alarms or unusual heat signatures from equipment changes the playing field. This ensures a more accurate understanding of situations and less exposure for human workers before companies have complete information on incidents.

Thanks to the processing being done on the drone itself, rather than on the cloud, companies can avoid latency issues and allow systems to respond to urban settings and changing operational environments. These pre-scheduled, autonomous missions also mean that the drones are focused completely on the task in front of them without the distractions that plague human workers when seconds count and minutes save lives.

Autonomous drones also follow protocol exactly, avoiding error because of human bias or a lack of adherence to policies or training. And while humans become less and less accurate every time a repetitive task is done, autonomous drone systems are able to carry out these tasks uniformly and accurately every single time, further reducing the risk of error in vital safety processes and inspections.

One of the best examples of this is the sense-and-avoid technology being developed by drone manufacturers. This technology would allow for better accident avoidance through built-in collision-avoidance sensors and geo-fencing. Future solutions, such as these, that will allow autonomous drones to receive data from other in-flight drones and planes will also help them carry out protocols more accurately through faster processing and course adjustment when necessary.

How Percepto’s Autonomous Drone Solution Makes Your Company and Employees Safer

Percepto’s expert team of drone technology engineers and specialists have dedicated their lives to bringing autonomous drone solutions to companies across the globe. We work closely with FAA regulators to ensure that our autonomous Percepto Solution is safe, compliant and beneficial to everyone involved. Our drones help ensure that operations and employees are safer and more capable of doing their jobs.

Percepto is creating, from the ground up, smart software and algorithms that, in the future, will be able to navigate the changing environment.

Contact us today to find out how the Sparrow and the Percepto Solution can make your operations more efficient for your company and safer for your employees, too.

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Every successful manufacturing company knows that cost considerations don’t end with direct costs. Maintenance costs and manufacturing overhead balloon operations costs and per product prices while increasing the burden of site operations. Heavier regulations, environmental concerns, low oil prices, old energy sites and pressures to adopt renewable energy and new technology pressure sites to innovate and narrow their overhead.

In fact, utilities companies in North America are under increased pressure to trim the fat to meet the commitments of investors with reports estimating that they will need to cut $15 billion – approximately 20% of operation and maintenance costs – in the next five years to keep up.

But with the rising use of advanced drone systems in manufacturing operations, companies can more effectively cut down on manufacturing overhead costs and improve—not sacrifice—quality and efficiency.

Drones fit into the inevitable trend toward automation in manufacturing, a movement 80% of companies recognize as beneficial to their supply chain in the end.

Here are 5 ways that embracing drone-in-a-box technologies can improve your operations and save you money along the way.

1. Extend the Life Cycle of Vital Equipment

Possibly the greatest factory cost for manufacturing operations is the inevitable depreciation and obsolescence of equipment and facilities, particularly those exposed to the outdoors. As equipment is used more and more for production, and are worn down by weather and traffic, company owners are faced with costly repairs or replacement needs because of a system that is reactive to depreciation, rather than proactive.

For example, if a company has a total manufacturing cost of $1.13 million per year, they may record a $260,000 manufacturing overhead. Of this overhead, the depreciation of the factory building and its equipment could be as much as $50,000 using traditional, reactive inspections.

While advanced drone-in-a-box technologies can’t make your equipment immortal, it can increase the life cycle by decreasing the frequency at which it needs to be replaced through preventative maintenance and operational insight.

With advanced drone technology, companies can cut down on manufacturing overhead costs by sending their drones out on automatic, pre-scheduled inspection missions to keep tabs on possible issues before they become actual problems.

During these missions, drone-in-a-box technologies are constantly collecting real-time data about the equipment status. As soon as a change or damage is detected a report is sent and reported back to the necessary staff members to evaluate the severity. These insights both provide early notification and change the way site operations are conducted, yielding increased efficiency while lessening the workload on equipment and extending its life.

For example, a company finds out through drone inspection that a fuel tank placed by the ocean has suffered from roof-top corrosion, compromising its water resistance. Using this insight gained from the inspection, the company can position future sites differently to prevent this issue.

2. Cut Down on Safety and Personal Protection Equipment Costs

Staff members often must carry out dangerous work in the name of maintenance and safety inspection work in manufacturing operations, requiring robust insurance and personal protection equipment. If an employee gets injured during one of these inspections, the company may face costs from workers’ comp claims, too.

By using drone-in-a-box solutions to respond to maintenance and safety inspection needs, operators can generally prevent exposing their teams to dangerous situations, such as:

• Hazardous material exposure
• High temperatures
• Malfunctioning line equipment

This translates to decreased dependency on advanced personal protection equipment as drones handle the work instead.

3. Reduce the Costs of On-Site Surveillance

Instead, drone in-box-technologies can carry out pre-scheduled missions to support:

• Security surveillance
• Safety inspections
• Quality control inspections data collection
• Operations inspections

And they can do this all while providing valuable data along the way. By assigning single or multiple drones to carry out routine safety and maintenance inspections, you reduce the need to pay for staff to fix unexpected equipment failure in the future.

4. Ease Regulatory Compliance

Compared to other industries, manufacturing bears the brunt of costs related to regulatory compliance. Manufacturers spend an estimated $192 billion annually to comply with a variety of regulatory standards from environmental to safety to economic compliance.

Part of this hefty cost is consulting and hiring legal and regulatory experts to avoid fines if companies don’t meet these standards. Not only do these costs impact the individual bottom line of companies, but they can hinder their ability to compete domestically and internationally in their industry.

In 2007, U.S. manufacturers shelled out 6.2% of value-added-revenue to meet air and water emission standards, while their international competitors were able to stay under 6% of value added in their own countries. With traditional means of monitoring compliance and hiring experts, it can be difficult to cut down this expense enough to make a price-point difference.

By incorporating advanced drone solutions into operations, companies and their operators can reduce the need for human experts and informal inspections by using the technology’s up-to-date software to ensure their facilities are up to par with local regulation.

By receiving data reports from pre-scheduled missions, operators receive proactive alerts about facility operations that risk violating regulations, as well as data that show where safety and environmental efforts can be improved. These capabilities don’t just cut down the cost of paying experts for similar insight, but considerably lower the risk of compliance-related fines in the future.

5. Make Factory Management and Data Collection More Cost Effective

The key to creating profitable business practices lies in the data you can collect about your operations. Collecting and interpreting large amounts of it is difficult with manual efforts alone, and often results in data points being overlooked and omitted.

Through pre-schedule data gathering missions, advance drone solutions can collect a variety of data on key production KPIs, such as:

• Overall labor effectiveness;
• Capacity utilization rate;
• Manufacturing process cycle time;
• Material rejection and scrap;
• Emission rates;
• Downtime;
• Inventory management; and
• Safety near-misses.

For instance, companies that are concerned with their emission rates can use automated drone technology to monitor rates, as well as identify operational practices that are creating unnecessarily high emissions. With this information, operators can correct or adopt new practices to remedy high emissions, avoiding regulatory and finance penalties down the road.

Not only does this cut down on the paid man-hours spent collecting this information manually, it provides a more in-depth look at what is working and what opportunities exist to improve factory cost and output efficiencies.

Percepto’s Drone-in-a-Box Solution Makes Your Manufacturing Operation More Profitable

Drone-in-a-box solutions, such as the Percepto Solution, are drone technologies that operate with the use of a launch base that charges and communicates with an autonomous drone using a cloud management system.

These systems allow companies to combat equipment and facility depreciation, avoid legal and regulatory fees, avoid paying staff for menial work, prevent costly environmental and safety incidents and more.

Percepto’s advanced autonomous drone in-box-solution provides intelligent, multi-mission capabilities powered by our proprietary PerceptoCore technology, helping companies collect robust, comprehensive data about their operations and have insights sent to operators in real time.

Made up of the Percepto Base, Percepto Cloud Management System, and Sparrow autonomous drone, our solution will save your operation time and money while maintaining and improving ongoing operations and activities.

Contact us today to learn more about how the Percepto Solution can slash your manufacturing overhead costs and propel your operation forward.

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As the use of civilian, commercial, and military drones expand, media coverage of the technology is rapidly increasing. While the media often uses the terms “unmanned aerial vehicle” (UAV), “unmanned aircraft system” (UAS), and “autonomous drone” interchangeably, there are meaningful differences.

Since the drone services market is growing dramatically – $4.4 billion in 2018 and expected to reach $63.6 billion by 2025 – we believe it’s important to clarify the definition of each term.

What is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)?

“UAV” refers specifically to aircraft that can be remotely piloted without requiring a human onboard to fly. While this term can be used accurately to describe drones in commercial or civilian use cases, it is most commonly used in reference to military applications.

The Predator XP is a great example of a UAV. It was manufactured by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and was designed for use by the United States Air Force and Central Intelligence Agency to complete aerial reconnaissance and surveillance missions. The Predator XP, equipped with cameras, sensors, and munitions is also referred to as a remotely piloted aircraft (RPA).

What is an Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)?

“Unmanned aircraft systems” refers to the entire system required for advanced drone operations including the aircraft, ground control station, and communications system.  UAS can either require a human pilot on the ground (such as the Atlas Pro) or be fully autonomous without the need for a human operator (such as the Percepto Solution).  Any UAS includes a UAV as the aircraft component of the system.

The U.S. government prefers the use of “UAS” when talking about drone technologies because it refers to the full system, not just the aircraft itself. UAS are most commonly used for surveying, mapping, inspection, and transportation of goods.  However, many modern consumer products used for civilian tasks like filmmaking or racing, technically qualify as UAS.

One example of a UAS is the Percepto Solution, which includes a drone, a smart charging base, and a data management system. Here’s how it works:

The Percepto Base enables the Sparrow drone to carry out missions without a pilot by providing shelter, in-air communications, a charging port, and regular checks for mechanical issues.  Percepto’s data management system, AIM, communicates flight details and schedules, processes and analyzes data collected, and generates reports upon landing.

What is an RPA?

An RPA is a Remotely Piloted Aircraft. As the term implies, these require a person to control the aircraft. Some people use the term interchangeably with UAV. This terminology is typically used in Europe.

RPAs tend to be used for commercial purposes. A license is required to fly an RPA. 

What is a commercial drone?

A commercial drone describes a UAS that unlike a recreational drone is used as part of a business. 

Commercial drones are used in a growing array of industries and in many capacities. These include deliveries, photography, crop monitoring, land surveying, outdoor and indoor inspections and more. Drones typically perform commercial tasks safer, quicker, better and cheaper.

The Percepto Sparrow fits into this category. When performing inspections, the AI-powered technology enables it to go beyond data capture and offer real-time actionable insights.

What is an Autonomous Drone?

The Sparrow I, manufactured by Percepto, is an example of an autonomous drone. It does not require an operator on the ground or in the air, so it can carry out 24/7, pre-scheduled missions powered by our PerceptoCore technology for aerial security, maintenance, and operations.

Explore Autonomous Drone Stations by Percepto

UAV and UAS manufacturers often promote their products as being “autonomous”, but without an autonomous drone station, a human pilot is still required on the ground, with the human pilot representing a major operational cost burden. Percepto’s autonomous drone stations eliminate the need for a human operator. Upon deployment, operational costs are little more than electricity, enabling 24/7 site surveillance, routine inspections of critical assets, and advanced modeling and forecasting of production.

Contact us today to find out how the Percepto Solution can work for your business.

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