The Drone.UA company began September 2019 with the DJI Enterprise Roadshow, a large-scale event dedicated to the topic of using drones in various industrial sectors. The main idea of holding it for the organizers was the opportunity to share the practical experience of their partners, without exaggeration and smoothing out the “sharp” edges. It is in this discussion format that you can get the most useful information.
The speakers were specialists from DJI, as the largest player in the drone market with an Enterprise focus, and representatives of partner companies that implement these solutions in their production.
Why and who needs enterprise direction?
“For 13 years, DJI has produced a wide range of products, from the devices we fly into the air to the gimbals and cameras we use on the ground,” said Andrew Yue, director of DJI Enterprise sales in the northeast region. – We started working in 2006 with a staff of 20 people and in 2018 there were already 12 thousand. 20% of our employees are engineers, thanks to which the company remains a driver of innovation and focuses on new developments. Today we continue to be leaders in drone manufacturing.
The main priorities for the company are high performance, availability and flexibility of the solutions offered. There are many examples of how drones can be used to solve practical problems - from installing multispectral cameras on them to biosensors for tracking the life of whales (as was the case with the DJI Inspire). According to Andrew, it was these examples that inspired them to create Enterprise, a development division aimed at solving business problems. Generally, the basis of any drone operation is to obtain some type of data, which goes like this - first you need to fly the drone into the air to get the data, then you need to process it and then make a decision based on the analysis. For successful operation, three elements are needed: a drone as a platform that carries a payload, a payload in the form of a variety of sensors, and software for managing and analyzing data. DJI is working in all of these areas.
Yuchen Zhao, DJI Country Representative for Eastern Europe and Asia, continues:
“Our line of customers includes businesses from public safety, energy, construction, infrastructure and agriculture. We can design drones with specialized components to solve specific problems, such as conventional and thermal imaging cameras.”
Popular cameras for solving business problems are XT2, Z30, X4S, X5S, X7, and as for drones, these are INSPIRE 2, PHANTOM 4 SERIES, MAVIC 2, SPARK. Various configurations are possible, such as standard, multi-sensor and varied payloads. In the field of software, there are also various products, depending on the needs of the client, such as DJI PILOT, DJI GO, DJI XT Pro, DJI GS PRO, as well as the ability to develop software to suit your needs.
The fact that the company is choosing the right direction for further development is evidenced by the numbers: in the United States in 2018, over 370 thousand drone operators were registered and most of them choose DJI drones as their work tools.
Key examples of industrial applications of drones
There are quite a lot of directions and options for using drones. Fevzi Ametov, co-founder of Drone.UA, focused the attention of those present on the main ones:
Security: searching, rescuing people, fighting fires, assessing the accident rate of buildings. In the period from 2015 to 2018, the number of public organizations and government agencies that use drones increased by 514% and now there are over 1000 of them. In Ukraine, this approach is also gaining momentum. Already, about 133 lives have been saved with the help of drones. Most often, MAVIC 2 ZOOM, M210 + XT + Z30, M600 PRO, P4 PRO+ GS PRO are used for these purposes. The ability to install zoom cameras, thermal cameras, floodlights and loudspeakers takes drone operations in this segment to a whole new level.
Infrastructure: inspection of roads, bridges, crossings, quarries, telecommunications. Here, drones help inspect objects and collect information for modeling and design. $4.8 million was saved in the telecommunications industry by inspecting 15,000 towers. The platforms that are most often used are MAVIC 2 ZOOM, P4 RTK+ GS PRO, M210 RTK+ XT + Z30. When inspecting power lines, RTK solutions are chosen to overcome electromagnetic disturbances.
Agriculture. Here, drones are needed to make production decisions and correct the situation, if necessary. For example, the application of pesticides by drones is gaining more and more momentum; about 15 thousand DJI AGRAS devices are operating in China. This unit is suitable for solving single-point tasks when it is impossible for large equipment to enter the field due to rain or there are areas with problematic terrain. Solutions - P4 PRO V2+ GS PRO, M100 + NIR CAMERA, M210 + XT + X4S, AGRAS T-16. By the way, the latest drone became available in other markets besides Chinese quite recently. The first copy has already appeared in Ukraine.
Energy. DJI solutions using thermal imagers are increasingly being used here, for example, inspecting solar panels, wind and nuclear power plants, power lines, etc. Almost $9.5 million is being invested worldwide in all kinds of drone solutions. They mainly use MAVIC 2 ZOOM, M210, M210 RTK. All these platforms allow you to obtain very high-quality data; you can fly up to the object of study at a distance of 5-6 meters, and if you use zoom, you can examine the smallest details, including individual bolts or fasteners.
Construction. As Fevzi Ametov notes, drones in this industry are most often used in the West, but in Ukraine this approach is beginning to develop. Thanks to drones, specialists receive metrics, record construction stages and use this data for reporting to investors. The time to obtain this data is reduced by 98%. Similar information is also needed for insurance, since recording and detailing are also important there. Mainly for construction tasks, MAVIC 2 ZOOM, P4 RTK, M210/M600 PRO are also used.
Based on his practice, Fevzi Ametov believes that it is not enough to just buy a drone - it is important to properly integrate it into the production process, think through its operation down to the smallest detail, including what the platform and payload should be, what quality of data is needed, what software is best for this It will suit whoever will be the pilot. It is necessary to train personnel to use the equipment correctly and explain in advance what type of data should be obtained. This is important, since the success of implementing drones in an enterprise depends on these stages.
Together with representatives of DJI and the management of DroneUA, the official importer and distributor of DJI in Ukraine, Enterprise, Tatyana Kondratenko, head of geodesy and topography, presented solutions with concrete examples, and practical cases of using drones were demonstrated by Sergey Fedchun, director of customer relationship management, Metinvest, Alexey Chernomor, chief surveyor of Eristovsky Gok FERREXPO and Expert of IT-Transit company Anatoly Mikhailenko. Speakers' reports will be published as separate publications on DroneUA pages.
