Science & technology | Drones in a box

Making multicopters easier to use will increase the number in use

Though regulations will have to change, too

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SMALL multicopter drones—souped-up versions of those sold by the million as Christmas toys—have tremendous potential for use in industry and agriculture. Rather than erecting scaffolding or bringing in a mechanical platform to inspect things like roofs and chimneys, the job can be done instantly, and probably for less money, by sending up a drone-mounted camera. Drones can also fly along pipelines and power cables, checking for damage faster than a ground-based operation could manage. Similarly, they can survey fields for signs of pest or drought at a fraction of the cost of a manned flight.

Most existing drones do, however, need to be flown by an experienced operator. Indeed, the law often requires this. Drones also need technical support and maintenance. And the people operating them would be well advised to have an understanding of the legal and safety implications of what they are up to. Hence the appeal of the “drone-in-a-box”. This is a term being applied to the offerings of several firms that aspire to sell the advantages of drones without the associated worries.

The box in question is a base station that houses the drone, recharges it and transfers the data it has collected to the customer. The drone may fly autonomously, according to a preprogrammed schedule, find its way automatically to a point it is ordered to visit, or be piloted remotely by an operative of the company that supplies the system, from a control centre anywhere on the planet.

Feel the buzz

One of the most advanced drone-in-a-box systems is produced by Airobotics, an Israeli company. In this case the box is made of metal and is about the size of a garden shed. A hatch in the roof opens and through it a purpose-built quadcopter called Optimus lifts off to fly a preprogrammed route. After each such tour it returns, and its part-used battery is swapped for a freshly charged one by a robot arm within the box.

Airobotics’ first contract for this system is with Israel Chemicals (ICL). In this case the drone’s job is stock control. It monitors ICL’s phosphate-rock mining and processing operation in the Negev desert, by measuring the dimensions of recently mined piles of the stuff—and thus the amount of rock they contain. That task was previously carried out by a human being scrambling over the heaps with survey tools. Now it is done with 3D photography and computer modelling. The drone method is quicker and easier, and does not require the site to be closed to trucks for safety reasons. It is also completely automated. The drone knows when to fly, what route to take, and what to do en route.

Atlas Dynamics, another firm with Israeli roots (though it is now based in Latvia) is following swiftly in Airobotics’ wake. Its drone garage, which it refers to as a “Nest”, is smaller than that of its rival (about the size of a fridge-freezer), is made of carbon fibre, and can accommodate several drones. Those drones, which it calls Atlas Pros, are different, too. An Atlas Pro has three engines and unlike most helicopter drones, which are regular polygons with a lifting propeller at each vertex, it has a clear front and back. In its case, two propellers are mounted forward and one at the rear. The trick is that the struts holding the front propellers are also aerofoils that provide lift during forward flight, meaning the drone combines the characteristics of a helicopter with those of a fixed-wing aircraft. This provides stability, meaning the craft can fly in winds that a conventional multicopter could not handle.

According to Guy Cherni, head of marketing at Atlas Dynamics, the firm’s first target market is security. If an alarm is tripped at a fence or gate, for example, a drone will launch itself automatically from the Nest to provide a close-up view of the potential incursion point. Drones can also be programmed to carry out regular patrols, or sent on one-off human-controlled missions by means of a simple map-based app.

A third company, Airmada, of Boston, Massachusetts, has taken a slightly different approach from these other two firms. Rather than go to the expense of developing its own robot aircraft, it has designed a base station that can accommodate any brand of commercial drone in line with the customer’s desire. Again, this station swaps out the drone’s battery and enables the remote operation of what is, in essence, a security and surveillance system for industrial plants.

Another Boston-based firm—GreenSight Agronomics—has a different sort of plant in its sights, the sort that grows. It offers a boxed drone for surveying farms and golf courses. Its drone is fitted with a “multispectral” camera tuned to be sensitive to specific wavelengths of light, including some in the infra-red. This permits it to detect health-related changes in vegetation before they are visible to the naked eye.

Ruling the skies

GreenSight is also tackling the question of how drones are regulated. At the moment, American law requires someone who can see the drone to be in ultimate charge of it. Moreover, that person must have passed an exam to qualify as a drone pilot. In December, though, the Federal Aviation Administration gave GreenSight a waiver from this law which permits a qualified pilot to fly drones remotely, from Boston.

At the moment, this waiver saves no manpower, for an observer on the ground must still follow the flight and be able to take control in an emergency. GreenSight hopes, though, that this will never need to happen and that, by giving an extended demonstration of the fact that remote flying can be done safely, a further relaxation of the rules will eventually do away with the job of observer.

In Israel, Airobotics has already gone through a similar process: Optimus drones are now able to fly unsupervised. In both countries the authorities are being sensibly cautious, but the data suggest that automatic flights of the Optimus variety are safer than piloted ones, particularly during take-off and landing, when most accidents happen. Whether this also applies to remote piloting remains to be seen. But GreenSight seems confident it will. Justin McClellan, the firm’s chief marketing officer, hopes the strictures on observers will change next year—indeed, he expects a general relaxation of the rules, not just for GreenSight, but also for its competitors.

Correction (January 19th, 2018): A previous version of this piece referred to Guy Cherni as the boss of Atlas Dynamics. He is in fact the head of marketing. This has been amended.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline "Ready for take off"

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