Automodality is highlighted in the September issue of Unmanned Systems magazine. Brian Sprowl interviews Jimmy Halliday about AutoModality’s winning streak in UAS competitions.
01
Transportation
Transportation includes numerous fixed assets requiring survey and monitoring services including bridges, tunnels and highway and interchange systems. AutoModality’s transportation vertical will concentrate its efforts on a survey and monitoring service set to directly address the requirements of this huge industrial sector. Transportation has a vast array of mission profiles, combining aspects of other industry verticals in which AutoModality specializes. Some of these profiles include construction survey and monitoring, traffic monitoring and analysis, search and rescue support.
02
Mining
AM has developing a mining exploration and navigation application through a grant with the United States government. The System has currently achieved fully autonomous flights of over 5,000 feet while navigating a round trip from a starting point to a destination indicated on a map of the mine. The next phases of the project will develop the following capability: detecting changes and map errors, map exploration and correction and multi-level navigation.
03
Warehousing
Warehouse Cycle Counting System – AM is in initial application developent for a drone-based autonomous warehouse inventory counting system. The current process for acquiring cycle counting and other critical inventory data is both labor/materiel intensive and complicated by liability and safety concerns. However, critical capital expenditure and product decision-making hinges on the accuracy of these counts, placing significant importance on narrowing deviations of error as much as possible and increasing the available datasets with more frequent counts. Because the current state-of-the-art is labor-intensive, data acquisition is necessarily limited in scope to manage costs. By automating the process and utilizing robotic drones and vehicles armed with artificial intelligence and predictive edge-analytics, this project will dramatically expand the available data pool, markedly increasing estimation accuracy while substantially reducing cost and time of data acquisition. Increased precision, accuracy and speed of acquiring this “actionable” data will improve capital expenditure forecasts and create reverberating efficiencies downstream of inventory/storage/distribution workflow processes.
04
Aerospace
AM has also been wortking with multiple U.S. major airlines and one major overnight courier to develop a fully-functional, fully-autonomous aircraft inspection system. The current process for acquiring sufficient data to do aircraft inspection is both labor/material intensive and limited in efficiencies in both time and facility as to effect timely delivery of visual data acquisition. Additionally, the current manual workflows expose Delta personnel to unacceptably high levels of personal risk and enterprise liability. Because of these issues, data acquisition is extremely costly and deleterious to the airline’s bottom line.By automating the process and utilizing autonomous robotic UAVs with Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven defect detection, this capability will dramatically expand the available data pool, markedly increasing inspection efficiency and accuracy while substantially reducing cost of data acquisition. Increased precision, accuracy and speed of acquiring this “actionable” data will reduce AOG revenue losses, improve capital expenditure forecasts and create reverberating efficiencies downstream during all phases of aircraft inspection and monitoring.
05
Electricity Generation & Distribution
AutoModality can offer a number of critical mission profiles and advanced analytics modelsn to the electricity generation industry. Generation, transmission and distribution (GTD) has a number of critical assets that require constant survey and inspection including: generation plants, substations, distribution lines, line towers and neighborhood line systems. AutoModality has the capability to field neighborhood and regionally located vehicles that can perform autonomous survey and inspection flights, returning real-time video and other data analytics to our mission control center, enabling real-time communication of system and station status to our GTD clients.
06
Oil & Gas
AutoModality has developed a similar set of mission profiles and analytics for the energy industry. Like GTD, energy industry companies also maintain a diverse set of assets that require constant survey, inspection and monitoring including: exploration sites, refineries, distribution depots and ports and pipeline distribution systems. AutoModality has the capability to field neighborhood and regionally located vehicles that can perform autonomous survey and inspection flights, returning real-time video and other data analytics to our mission control center, enabling real-time communication of system and station status to our energy clients.
07
Insurance
In this current environment where global climate change is having increasingly complex and devastating effects on buildings, industries and infrastructure across the globe, AutoModality sees a clear and sizable opportunity assisting the Insurance industry in the logistically complicated tasks of damage assessment and claims adjustment, especially in lieu of large natural disaster events such as Hurricanes Harvey and Maria and the recent terrible fire destruction in Northern California. AutoModality’s insurance vertical will assist insurance companies in their ability to rapidly deploy assessment/adjuster teams to more efficiently and effectively help accident and disaster victims as quickly as possible after a loss.
08
Public Safety
Climate change will be an economic driver for many industries in the next few decades. Weather has become increasingly potent with storms creating havoc throughout our economy. Storms affect physical assets in particular, and AutoModality sees a significant opportunity in disaster relief, search and rescue and post-storm damage assessment. Mission Control for Teams will also be an extremely effective platform for helping first responders with existing drone programs manage their teams, fleets, missions and mission data. AMMC Teams was built with first responders top of mind.
09
Architecture. Engineering & Construction
AutoModality will focus one of our key vertical industry groups on architecture, engineering and construction. AutoModality is developing specific mission services to serve AECO, enabling these clients to have detailed eyes on construction sites and developing projects in real-time as the project progresses. AutoModality’s UAVs will have the capability to launch on a regular interval from the construction site and provide real-time video and still images to help monitor progress, assess engineering challenges, analyze critical-path scheduling, and survey design changes and alterations for construction management and planning.
