# Automated Large Scale Mapping with Battery Swapping AERI Station

- Event: NestGen ’24
- Published: April 2, 2024
- Length: 26:45
- Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/17Ia8isLdek/

> The transcript of a recorded NestGen session, for reading or for use with an AI tool. It comes from the video's
> captions; automatic captions can mishear names and terms.

## About this session

In this session, Nikolay Ryashin, CEO of AERI, discusses automated drone operations for monitoring remote areas in extreme temperatures. He presents the Hive Station solution, highlighting its autonomous mission capabilities without human intervention. The system streamlines operations like battery swaps and data uploading, reducing costs and enhancing efficiency. Learn about its versatility in handling large-scale mapping missions with multi-battery swaps and mission pause/resume features. Through the demonstration, viewers grasp its adaptability to diverse climates and integration with cloud services for swift data analysis.

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## Transcript

**[0:21]** imagine you had to monitor large areas of remote land with extreme temperatures as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheits and for every Mission you would require a drone pilot phys physically present at the site to capture the data with routine monitoring of large scale areas concerns like high temperatures battery changes and high cost of Labor POS quite a problem but does that mean monitoring and inspection of sites shall be seized during the sweltering summer months absolutely not and thanks to The Cutting Edge technology we don't have to that is exactly what today's session is all about so let's welcome our speaker for today Mr Nico rashin the CEO of AR who will be explaining how this TS process has been automated to cut operational costs and launch multiple autonomous flights with human interv intervention from their cold command centers having founded drone port in 2020 Nick designed and developed an Hive station solution which allows uavs to operate completely

**[1:24]** autonomously but before we begin we had a few of housekeeping rules that we would like you to uh before we begin I would just like to share some housekeeping roles so grab your favorite beverage and get ready to dive deeper into this session please please feel free to type in any questions you might have during the session in the Q&A chat box the session is getting recorded and will be published soon we also have the hive booth in the Expo section please make sure you visit it during the networking and Booth visit slots last but not the least if you like this session do make a LinkedIn post using the hashtag NES genen and tag flightway who knows you might be the top three posts who will receive a special n hamper lastly I would like to thank our sponsors our title sponsor DJI and our gold sponsor sunflower labs and with that over you Nick thank you very much I'm very happy to participate I believe uh third time on an estg uh so a lot of you

**[2:26]** who is watching this um type of the sessions from year to year now me at the co5 is we are exactly the same uh team but a little bit rebranded to I so today I will explain you how how we can use the technology for big scale and mapping missions where we need to cover a very very big area uh to make the monitoring to collect the data how we can uh make two things first of all to make it more effective from the technological point of view to made it automatically and without the human intervention using our do and also we want to describe how we can expand this Mission with postprocessing of the data uh sending the data automatically to third party Services getting Oro for and cloud services which help us to get the reports within one hour from the Drone lens to the box and when we can calculate and measure something else uh without the human intervention seven times more effectively in a

**[3:30]** and sometimes even much more cheaper so I will not consume a lot of time your time more let's jump uh more deeply inside our session now it's good oh yes your screen is visible Nick yeah so one more time my name is Nick we are the company who is building the Drone ports uh I think more than five years for today and one of our solution is the I report m300 it's uh big drone port with the robot swapping capabilities which is working with industrial grade drones like metric 300 and Metric 350 for today so this station is industrial grade drone ports which are suitable for working for years in a very very different and severe condition from uh a big minuses from minus 40 and a big humid to very extreme heat temperature of plus 55 and and Cent and

**[4:33]** uh for today we already buildt like t t tens of the station which are working from over the world in a different uh climate conditions and I want to describe you the Showcase how these stations are suitable for the places where we need to monitor a big territories and make it fully automatic from the hardware and software point of view just a little brief uh some of you are very common with the docks with the Drone docks our station is made fully by us and we uh produce the hard body the robotic part the switchboard uh we develop the software of controlling the Drone port and uh controlling the Drone itself as well so the system is working automatically everything that we need is electricity and uh any kind of connection uh system is uh specified to work on demand or uh by putting the mission in the calendar so you don't need to do anything just in one

**[5:36]** day a one hour you just press the start button of the mission and drones get uh outside from the box makes the mission automatically come back robot swapping the batteries and the Drone is ready to get on the next fight just within couple of minutes I want to share and and present to you video about our product a little bit more so we are Sur Real Real manufacturer we already made a lot of these boxes we now have a line of five different drone ports but this one is our first baby in one of the most siral because uh it's working with the Enterprise uh solution draw on masteries 300 350 and working with the swapping of the batteries that help us to make per day like 24 full missions capacity of one drone Port Station we're not only manufacturing all the Drone dog but we are manufacturer of Robotics we produce design and manufacture robotics we making the switchboard we developing the

**[6:38]** software of controlling the robot we have a different uh options of controlling it's automatic mode manual mode where you can make some maintenances of the station or the system control itself fully automatically it's very robust system which can work from very very low temperatures to very high temperatures with the climate control inside and the main part of this system is protic itself so we are manufacturing free access robot which helps to uh swap the batteries one by one hot swap of the batteries the the Drone is not switching off between the sessions and we can uh push the data from the Drone while the robot is maintaining it so robot is Cap uh capable to swap the batteries close the battery holder switch on switch off the uh drone uh button itself and uh just within couple of minutes the system is ready to uh

**[7:38]** prepare a drone to take off on the next mission and drone is just going on the next mission that help us to be to make a big mapping mission of like five six seven eight pieces at the same time without human information at all you just press start and you just control that drone could fly for four or five hours cut cutting the big big scaling mapping on the small pieces which are capable drawn to take off to get the mission to come back and swap the batteries safely let's go further um so yeah sorry we using in this station industrial drones now it's met is 350 the station is uh compatible the Drone have more endurance uh battery capacity is higher also we see that the con connection uh between the remote controller and the Drone is more stable drone is catching rtk satellites uh signal is faster so we

**[8:39]** can see the difference between 300 and 350 is very looks like the same model but we see great improvements in Hardware um capabilities already for this case we are explaining you that by using the P1 camera uh filming on the different heights it could be 120 150 M or usually it could be 300 300 M uh from which he we are uh making uh polygons with the different uh settings um so basically we are building a big big big polygon and the system automatically Cuts this polygon on the small parts uh drone takes off from the station from any area which is uh um which could be flew from this drone station to the part of the piss we fly to the starting point makes all the lines come back

**[9:40]** uh safely lands the system is swapping the batteries and we are going on a second part first forth and so on and when the Drone is uh sitting inside the station for the swapping of the batteries drone is getting the data to do the Hub and we are not waiting for the end of the full mapping we can have already all these files and photos and videos on our server depends on the size of the bandwidth I can just show you the video how how the big mapping Mission are using usually we just pick the model of the Drone we just pick the model of the uh payload we make mission that we want in this case we will draw with you middle size of the mapping and uh we just take the boundaries of this mapping automatically just P put it on the uh web platform we set up some details if we need to set up overlap like side or frontal if

**[10:43]** we need to set up GSD and after that we have a tool which allow us to see how many pieces of this Mission will be split on to get back safely we can play with this uh quote and uh come back on 50% of the battery on or on the 30% of the battery but anyway we can even uh make some uh analysis before we take off on the pieces of the mission so this Mission will be uh based on the four pieces of mapping with a different type of the lines yeah and we have even details how many uh how many phos we will have the the battery quarter for the for this Mission as well let's go further uh how it's how it's looking in real life so after the Drone going on the uh some kind of the mission it comes back from the mission land automatically on the table uh the system understand that the Drone is standing

**[11:48]** on the table we centralized drone in the centrer position with the different kind of the uh drivers the table is going down in the system roof is closing and then and let's jump inside the station to see what is going further the robber is opening the the switcher takes battery in making the hot swapping so we take the first battery from the Drone put it in the charging station in the charging station we have eight slots so uh having six batteries it's free pair of batteries is enough for the system to work 24.7 and fly it seamlessly without any waiting for the B battery to be charged but if we have eight batteries we always have a spare part for safety and to be sure that we can fly on demand every time so we make an hot swap of the batteries of the system one by one the Drone itself in this time is uh sending the data uh on the server uh system the robot is clothing the battery

**[12:54]** holder and then the system is ready to get drone for a takeover so the uh battery swapping Cycles uh finished drone standing on the platform the system is checking all electronics and we're getting through the huge huge safety pre-check before we take off and we need to be sure that we have enough level of precise of the satellites we are using also the rtk model which help us not only to work with the last 20 M of landing on the platform but also to be effective in photog gretry because we are writing rtk data inside the photos drone take off system centralize get the table down close the roof and we're ready and we're waiting for the Drone so then we are waiting like from 20 to 40 minutes for the mission is uh finished and same cycle from one to one and this could happen like four

**[13:55]** hours after we get to the station we uh transfer all the data from the Drone seamlessly without any putting the Sim uh SD card uh physically we push all the data from the Drone to the hub to the server and uh client could see on a portal in a very very U short time like within tens of seconds a big photos it depends on the bandwidth uh appears on the portal and then after that we push this data to the postprocessing tool and this is one of the most interesting part I wanted to show to you so we're not only making the content uh capturing automatically but also postprocessing um Let Me Show You video it's not very short but I'm think it will be very interesting for you so one more time the system is opens drones take off flying automatically taking the the data drone is capturing photos without the human

**[14:59]** intervention then we send the files to the hub to the server we and get the utop photo mic back and then we're opening seamlessly from our software in our interface uh we opening the tool where we can work with Earthworks for example here we can show you that we can get through the ororo Mosaic we have a 3D tool of how we can see elevation model we have tool of comparing uh different periods of the filming between two times it could be from on daily basis on weekly basis on monthly basis depends on your wishes it could be comparing of the Oro photo or elevation model at the same time here we comparing two different py rots we see uh which Chang been done on the side Within These two py rots we can also play with elevation model and see by our eyes what changed from the cut and fill and for sure this is not

**[16:02]** the main the main is when we work the earth work progress we automatically detect the cut and fi and we can also work with some calculation this is most important and after drone is landing just within one hour we are uh able to get all these reports in our Cloud platform with without any needs to to make it physically and manually the GPS guys on place um everything that you've seen could be in a two options in a 2d in a 3D and we can jump and we can see also by the two Earth Earth Works progresses so just clicking the points and bounding on the map we can have just within the seconds reports about The Fill and cut uh between the two P rails and we can see how the side progress been changed uh just with within one week and uh that helps uh customers to look um and work with the rappers that contractors

**[17:08]** give them uh not only cut and fill we can also work with the surface density which is which could be very useful for some kind of the clients let's go further so yeah with the surface with the with the density one more time we are a able to measure uh volumes of any kind of materials very very fast to see how many fail and how many cubic meters we have here uh just want to remind system automatically drone when come backs upload all the files to the platform just photos we get back Oro photo Mosaic just within one hour and this or for Mosaic is going to the platform and uh if we are uh filming the the same uh site it will be compared between each other only on daily weekly or monthly basis that helps to have in one window

**[18:10]** in one platform uh very effective and aend Tool of collecting the data and post-processing the data and take automatic uh reps not from Human but from the robotics for sure for those who likes to work with the uh Point cloud we have this tool online as well and we are not limited with the number of Point clouds those who are working with the with these kind of tools know that usually it depends on the uh your computer capacity but in this case you're working in cloud with no uh any link with with the power of your computer what else we can say in this case so yeah if we have designed surface is very very interesting tool how we can work with this if we have any construction design files that can help us to visualize how it should be we can uh compare and uh and look of the progress of our Earth Works and uh

**[19:15]** controlled by the dates how many cut or how many fi should be uh in this area if we have any data from the customer so uh you can very easily control on daily or weekly basis um what done and what not been done and if it was made very accurately what else [Music] here let's go to yeah so everything linked with the with the rappers also what I wanted to present that uh all the data is put inside the rappers and you can see different kind of rappers you can can customize them uh for your wishes and uh you can work with this as I said previously if we have any data from the contractor and we if have construction documents that help us to make this tool very effective and uh just uh what all the

**[20:17]** contractors in the construction needs is uh comparison between plan and fact so if we have in construction documents from the uh customer we can have a plan and fact analysis uh in very high accuracy uh 360 photos could be uploaded on the same platform so we can not only see the Oto 2D 3D but also any kind of the uh 360 so we can make the customized um dashboards with the bi analytics based on the needs of um of the customer and uh all of this could be done seamless integrated with a drone Port system like ours when uh we do everything automatically from the takeoff to Landing to get your report without the human intervention yeah so let's summarize what we presented to you today um by com by connecting uh autonomous stations with the platforms

**[21:24]** which can postprocess and give the rates uh in Cloud we have a tool which allow us uh controlling by one person a big ecosystem of the Drone nested Solutions and have a lot of rappers from the different areas without human intervention so if we will try to uh understand how many time and how manyy uh how many money that uh um save and customer I think it will be X10 or X5 in some case and yeah so in in our case we automatically uh fly from the station comes back pushing the data on the service post process and giving the repr for our clients uh we have different kind kind of the use cases my partner from Saudi Arabia unfortunately could not present on this uh event but yeah we are very actively

**[22:24]** working in Saudi as well where we have deployed more than 20 stations by for today in one ecosystem we can deploy it uh in based on the cloud or we can make it on premise as well for the clients and uh how I want to close my booth in this case um I'm very glad and happy that uh being one of the pioneering guys in this technology now for today in 20 24 we see how clients are really using a made it uh workflow which is helping the client to have less human factor to save money to make uh uh everything automated and to work automatically without a big big uh demand of many old pilots I will I will be happy to share with you any kind of information and please if you have any questions now in this booth uh don't hesitate to ask them thank you very

**[23:27]** much thank you for sharing it that was really insightful I think we have a few questions you could take it up yeah uh one of them is uh so you can download the photos from the P1 without removing the card uh can you please one more time say sorry can you download the photos from the P1 moving the card sure that that will be very stupid if we cannot download the photos from the P1 and having the swapping system yeah we we downloading all the photo from the P1 uh uh SD card and when the system understand that uh all the files been downloaded and nothing is missing we are removing the data from the P1 to be able to collect it seamlessly to not every time clean it yeah okay uh there's one more what is the downtime for hot Swap and does the system support large mapping missions which require multi battery swaps and

**[24:29]** Mission pause resume yeah so the second part of this question is for sure because this is the main uh purpose of our system uh we cut the big mapping mission on the small pieces uh and as I said previously sometimes uh one big polygon takes up to 8 to 10 uh missions that means that the system is flying seamlessly for five hours and uh the person in the control and Command Center just sit and look on how two robots are working in connection uh the downtown of the hot swap depends usually not more than uh 2 minutes even less it depends on the pre-flight check usually yeah and I see one more question about the trailer uh yeah we have a systems we have a docks uh and this year we are think in June we will present the same capability drone Port system but two times

**[25:34]** smaller and three times less weight with the swapping capabilities and uh yeah our system could be uh could be install on the trailer and we can work from the generator uh previously when we shipped the system from place to place because it's robotics we need we needed to calibrate the robot but we ra um reemphasize the whole system that even when we ship the product from the place to place we don't need to calibrate Ro so it's just you need to be with some some kind of the angle and we need to have power supply and we're ready to to fly for sure yeah all right um thank you thank you so much nick uh that was really insightful and we uh we hope that you everybody enjoyed the session there are more sessions lined up uh so please check out the upcoming sessions in the reception tab at the uh homepage thank you

**[26:38]** thank you everybody and hope this will this was useful for you thank you very much thank you so much