DroNet ST Engineering
DroNet is short for Drone Network Systems coined by ST Engineering (Singapore Technologies Engineering). It enables groups of drones to operate and complete tasks in urban areas. Rather than each drone being controlled by a single person and transmitter, the drone swarm is controlled by a central hub where they are either deployed autonomously or on demand.
Where the technology really differentiates is in the use of artificial intelligence. Conventional drone operation requires the person to maintain visual line of sight communication between the transmitter and receiver. The operator navigates the drone away from obstacles, decides to fly when the weather is favourable, what altitude to fly at, tells the drone when to deploy and where to go to operate in a safe way.
Paths can be programmed with autonomous drone software such for spraying pesticides in agriculture but with ever changing environmental obstacles (such as in a suburb or city) its not realistic to have a UAV pilot creating planned flight maps for every dispatch. A data driven approach makes this feasible. Neural networks are used to process huge amount of information to recognise relationships. For example, input images are used in AI algorithms for the drone to make decisions on where to navigate based on likely hood of collisions.
Pandafly Singapore : FoodPanda Delivery Service
DroNet is designed for the urban environment in a network to carry out jobs on demand such as other delivery services, perimeter security and inspections. It is being used in partnership with FoodPanda (a popular Singaporean food delivery service) to create PandaFly, delivering the first fried chicken to a vessel 3km offshore in August 2020.
As these technologies develop delivery is becoming faster over longer distances. This enables safe distancing with the ongoing Covid situation and cutting delivery times and costs.
Leveraging artificial intelligence, drones are becoming a part of everyday life. FoodPanda aren’t the only food delivery service using drones for a competitive edge. Uber started testing drones for food delivery in 2019 in San Diego but not to peoples houses, rather ‘safe landing zones’ such as the roofs of parked Uber cars.
Google Drone Delivery
Google Wing’s food delivery service is live and active over 3 continents including Finland, Australia and the United States. They deliver food, groceries and chemist supplies. Their quickest delivery on record is 2 minutes and 47 seconds from order to delivery. Before the drone is deployed it’s route is established depending on the terrain, air space maps, weather conditions and other drone activity. See how it works here.
Other applications of DroNet’s group drone deployment include scanning reservoirs, safety monitoring, pollution monitoring , progress monitoring and building inspections. The security deployment enables real time threat detection, patrolling of perimeters and drone deployment to location based on trigger of a perimeter breach.
ST Engineering is not purely drone focused, they are one of Asias largest defence and engineering groups covering the aerospace, electronics, land systems & marine industry . One of their other drone based projects is DroScan. This uses UAVs to inspect assets such as aircraft to identify and visualise defects. This prevents the need for people to move and climb heavy equipment around the aircraft and work at heights to inspect making the process much safer.
For more on commercial drones check out Drone Solutions for Business and Commercial Use of Drones.
