# Getting Started with Autonomous Dock Operations

- Event: NestGen ’24
- Published: April 5, 2024
- Length: 36:02
- Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/kdQos-GF4ig/

> 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

Join us for an insightful session on initiating autonomous drone operations, enhancing efficiency, and ensuring flight safety. Explore the basics, hardware selection, setting up remote operation centers, and integration with enterprise workflows. Learn about communication protocols, flight planning for mapping, VMS compatibility, and support for various drone manufacturers. Discover the capabilities of FlytBase's platform, including real-time monitoring, diagnostics, fail-safes, and airspace awareness.

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## Transcript

**[0:19]** [Music] all right good morning and good evening everyone hello welcome to yet another session at njin 2024 U before we begin uh thank thank you so much for showing us so much love and appreciation staying with us for all most of the sessions at nen 2024 let me know how it's going with you today how are you finding finding the sessions uh let us know in the comment comment box your experiences your learnings uh we also have a NES gen wall of love so if there's something specific regarding the event that you wish to tell us about feel free to do that it'll help us curate the right courses and the right sessions for you at nesg going forward so without any further Ado I'll just walk you through what we're going to cover in this particular session so this session is all about getting to know how you can get started with autonomous drone operations and when I say autonomous I mean how can we

**[1:22]** remove human from the loop to make drone operations more efficient cost effective while also ensuring flight safety and compliance right right Neil So I think today our viewers must have learned about so many things right right from regulations to app Integrations and UTM all of these things now in this session we really need to get to the basics right how do you get started with autonomous doc operations and that's exactly what we're going to do today so yeah it's over to all right thanks Jeep for setting that context so going ahead I'll just give a quick introduction about ourselves so I have J on the session here as well so J has a proven track record U as a customer success associate at FlytBase so he has over two years of experience with our team under his belt he's a committed advocate for enter Enterprise level drone Automation and his role at the customer success team revolves

**[2:24]** around the pivotal tasks of onboarding Enterprises and helping them scale their in a box Solutions and Beyond his technical expertise he's also known for his exceptional ability to connect with clients ensuring that their operational goals are always met and not just operational but strategic goals as well and while he's away from his desk he can be seen exploring music reading Classics or he can be found at a cinema Hall so welcome J welcome to the session thank you thank you NE for the introduction it's quite flattering yeah anyways it's and yeah a brief intro about myself so uh I'm also a part of the customer success team my name is Neil Sharma I have about four years of experience in the Drone industry and I proudly wear the badge of a drone nerd um as uh J I also have a track record of working closely with a diverse uh you know diverse accounts in like the Enterprise sector various Industries um I make sure

**[3:28]** that you know all of our customers have a seamless Implement implementation process of their drone and do Solutions and my ultimate goal is to always help our customers achieve their strategic goals so yeah that was about us uh moving ahead uh I just want to walk you through a few housekeeping rules so we'll keep this um entire session engaging uh please feel free to use the chat section on your right to post your questions and we'll make sure that we answer them at the final Q&A session uh this session is also getting recorded So if you want to revisit what we spoke about um you know at your own time that's something you know you'll be do you'll be able to do and yeah and let us also know how you are feeling about this session did you like it you can drop in a LinkedIn post use the hash hashtag nesg and we also have a surprise

**[4:28]** for you so the top three posts will receive a special NES gen hamper so with that being said uh jet I think we can take it forward do you want to start sharing your screen yep all right let me know if you're able to see my stream yes all right then uh as Neil said the context for this uh session today we'll be learning about how you can get started right from the basics so uh without any further Ado let's jump on to this uh Neil would you like to take this up so how do you determine your use case right now you know you want to get into drone in the Box operations you have figured out that it will save your cost it will you know uh

**[5:30]** increase efficiency in your operations and also like lot of in a lot of use cases it will also reduce hazardous operations right so how do you proceed ahead so yes so the first step of getting started with an autonomous D solution is that you need to determine your use case and each use case is unique and complex so before deciding to deploy drone docks several factors uh are there that are needed to be considered uh they typically TP typically include the type of asset being monitored or inspected the frequency with which you want to conduct the operations uh the area of operations that you have so the total distance of the area that needs to be covered the current Technologies used do you have any workflows that you want to integrate so let's say any event based uh uh requirements do you want to send the Drone in response to let's say uh an intruder that was being detected uh and stuff like that

**[6:32]** so the idea is to really get into the nitty-gritty uh if you want to decide you know if the Drone and the dock is a good fit for you and what we usually recommend is that you go ahead and make a checklist for yourself so this is the time where you need to have a like sit down uh pen down your requirements so that you have clear like you you have Clarity on what you need to do so I'll just walk you through um you know a template that we've created so you to know you need to know what your application is it can be for security and surveillance can be for construction monitoring the type of asset that you want to monitor um so it can be you know a linear uh assets so if you want to inspect a pipeline let's say or a highway or let's say a rail yard which are the typical linear assets that you have vertical assets facades let's say Telecom Towers that's something that you need to take care of and the area of coverage so uh solar uh power plants warehouses you also need to

**[7:33]** figure out the frequency of your operations so do you want to fly the Drone once a month the dock is probably not a good fit for you if you want to do an hourly flight a daily flight uh you know that's something that you need to figure out along with that a few other things so what kind of sensors or payloads would you need to solve your use case so if you're let's say uh you want to inspect a track and you want to detect get the cracks in a particular you know uh Railway asset so you need to have a special drone that can carry a special payload which is able to zoom in let's say from 100 meters and look at that particular area and uh yes so event based response uh if you want to integrate with some alarms or iot sensors or like cat Systems computer rated dispatch and things like that so you also need to figure out your budget so that's something um you know you need to have a lot of clarity on um and once you have that Clarity uh you can then proceed ahead to The Next

**[8:37]** Step yeah I think Neil also uh something which U you know came up a lot today during other sessions as well like how a drone in the Box can be is not is not a single use case product right yeah now the applications that Neil spoke about today like surveying mapping um so your drone can be performing surveys for a like maybe it's a weekly or a daily thing but it can also be performing some scheduled petrols around the around the assets right so that is something you should also like keep a keep an eye on you should note note it that you can have multiple use cases it's not necessary that you should only go for one use case as you would typically because once the dock and the Drone are installed there are you know unlimit Limitless opportunities for you to explore there and to put uh thanks J for highlighting that to put things in perspective um you know you let's say you deployed a dock at a secure like a railway yard you obviously going to inspect the railway tracks uh but

**[9:40]** a use case that you can Leverage is that you can also secure your rail yard so run routine patrols over there if you want to monitor some construction or let's say create 3D maps so that is where you can get you know the full return of investment on uh the docks that you've deployed right I think can go ahead yeah yes Sor so I think now that you have determined your use case The Next Step would be to choosing the right choose the right Hardware right now as Neil spoke about how you would need a specific payload or a specific drone for your use case now you need to figure out what kind of documation and Ro you will need right now for performing um say a flight once a day uh you you can go for a typical drone charging station but if you have like uh if you need the Drone to be on standby all the time for say drone as first responder or something else performing regular schedules you would need something maybe like a battery swapping station right so now the next step is to choose the right hardware and again uh we

**[10:45]** have come up with a template for you um you know you can uh so what you need to do right you the you need to know the application that that is the thing we've already covered now the flight time required now you need to figure out how much area would you be covering what kind of flight time would you typically require so all of these Minor Details need to be taken care of before choosing the right Hardware along with you know the operating environment like in case uh you know your Hardware is equipped to sustain areas where there's- 40° celius um- 40 is a little too much around- 20 deg Celsius I would say or even in hotter areas where there's 40 deg C or above like seen in Saudi Arabia or Dubai right um then you need to figure out um your budget obviously you would need to uh you know cater to your allocated resources well and also the acceptable drone uh down time as I said the type of

**[11:46]** operation which if it's routine or it's event based it will also determine what is the acceptable drone downtime so with this in place now you have your use case figured out you have your docking station and the Drone figured out now you need something that enables something more which enables you to get the value out of all of these things right yeah so now is the step where you set up your remote drone Operation Center now typically um you know you have like multiple screens um like this is uh some of our partners and customers have some screens like this um understand it's quite it comes at a premium but but the idea of setting up a remote Operation Center is to have that awareness and visibility of your drone operations and dock operations all the time right now you need a software which could cater to your use case and also be compatible and take the make the best out of the hardware that you've got so how do you select the right Roc software right would you like to

**[12:52]** know s um and yeah so the next step really is to implement a reliable Enterprise grade software that automates your entire operations so establishing a remote drone Operations Command Center will enable efficient management and monitoring of your entire fleet of drones and docking stations U ensuring seamless and coordinated functioning from takeoff to landing and literally that comes everything like everything in between so there are a few essential functionalities that are needed so we'll start off with device management so you've bought a dock and a drone perhaps multiple drones and docks you want to be able to register them onto your platform very seamlessly the setup process should not take them more than 15 to 20 minutes so that's one thing that you need to take care of uh di Diagnostics as well so you need to have a proper Health Management System in place uh because again we talking about autonomy removing the human from the loop you need to ensure that

**[13:52]** you're receiving the right kind of warning or error messages from all these devices so that you're able to take an informed decision before you finally allow your drone to go into a flight I have a little an anecdote from like last week uh regarding Diagnostics so uh one of our partners that I work with uh they were performing these solar panel inspections in their uh area and while the Drone was performing a takeoff they noticed that there was a warning there was a health warning which said there's a battery capacity error of the batteries need maintenance and if they wouldn't have figured that the Drone probably wouldn't have come back to the dock or it wouldn't it wouldn't have completed the mission as well right so to know the hardware remotely to know what's going on with the hardware the Drone and its batteries as well is it's a crucial thing and with Diagnostics and the health management system um the operator who's you know probably thousands of miles away or hundreds of miles away from the Drone um they get they're getting that on-site

**[14:54]** visibility uh right yeah and building on on to that you also need a proper maintenance page so this is where you're getting the Telemetry from your devices so when I mean devices I mean the Drone and the docking station so like J mentioned the operator is usually going to be miles away from where the dock is deployed uh in a remote location you need to be able to see all those you know vital Telemetry details you need to be able to let's say if you want to reboot the docking station you can't travel for 4 hours and go on site and do that so having that fle flexibility uh is really a bonus and coming on to device logs you need to be able to trouble shoot things a lot faster in case something goes wrong um you know again traveling to the site is cumbersome there's a lot of administrative effort that goes into it so having a functionality where you can download the logs directly from the device and that to remotely and send it to the relevant stakeholders so

**[15:58]** let's so if it's a issue related to let's say uh the doc then you can download the log send it to you know the troubleshooting team so that they can come back to you uh in a faster time and help you with the next steps yeah right let's move on so miss flight planning right now you've determined your use case you have your Hardware now you need to make sure that you're able to achieve your goals and that happens through flight planning so what the kind of flights that you need to do uh so it can be maybe Waypoint missions or you're performing aial surveys through mapping missions so the platform needs to have all of these essential features so that you're able to achieve from your drone what you would intend to right you're when you're sending a pilot there uh they can maneuver the Drone uh they can plan a mission there but while it's done remotely um the kind of mission planning the kind of actions the Drone takes at way points it's quite crucial right and uh again the other essential parts of flight planning would also

**[17:02]** be go to location so if you would like to respond to an alert or drones says first responder the dfr term that's quite popular these days dfr means that you need to head to a location where there's an alert or maybe there's um you know a situation where you need to look at for that purpose go to location feature where you can quickly go to a location by just clicking on the map is quite essential and then uh maneuvering the drones remotely so having that ability to easily just use your keyboard or even a nice uh joystick uh you know reminiscing those old days of playing video games uh just using your drone flying around it's quite simple and intuitive so these things really help you get into that zone where you don't feel like you're miles away but you feel like you're on ground with the Drone right and building on to what we said J uh the type of mission planning features that you would uh require when you're going to autonomous d Ops they should be able to solve a lot of use cases so if you specifically see your Waypoint missions can come in

**[18:05]** handy for security and surveillance uh for mapping missions you need a grid Mission planning goto location comes in handy in public safety and drone as first responses uh even uh maneuvering your drones remotely so let's say you've responded to an incident uh you want to take manual control of your drone probably you know do some more search and rescue and if you're in construction monitoring or if you want to inspect your assets very closely this is where live Mission recording comes into play yeah so in live Mission recording just to go over it quite briefly uh you simply take manual control remotely using your keyboard or a joystick and then you are able to fly the tone and record a mission so again once the mission is recorded you can uh you know schedule that mission you can play daily on a weekly basis or whatever so that really helps you get into that accurate planning zone where you are able to uh properly pinpoint what kind of maneuver the Drone would make while it's flying repeated missions right all right moving on so airspace awareness and flight

**[19:12]** safety so I think this is one of the most crucial factors when you are flying Beyond Vision line of sight how do you ensure that other aircrafts don't Collide into mine how do you ensure that the Drone does not enter areas where it's not supposed to right it does not breach those zones where I my drone is not supposed to go now if I have a if I have a site security area I need to just fly around it and not outside then uh these are the things which you need to make sure that the platform has so for instance detect and avoid uh systems like adsb sensors or detect and avoid systems like um you know um these Intruder detection systems that have even Visual and radar sensors to detect adsb aircrafts or also um I mean commercial as well as Rogue aircraft which do not have any adsb out sensors so to the ability to have that and get warnings for your operator uh so that they know that they need

**[20:13]** to reduce the altitude or they need to change their paths is quite important and I think um one of the things that will also now eventually become become reality is uh having a network of uh unmanned traffic right this is something that will'll be talking about more in detail later today in a session but um having that ability to know uh what's going on in your airspace and then to have tactical deconfliction or a strategic deconfliction in place uh then collision avoidance now uh when you're flying the Drone using a remote control uh you can clearly see on your remote controller U the data from your uh CIS sensors whether it's horizontal or vertical right in the horizontal plane or the vertic but um while you are flying it remotely uh it becomes even more essential because uh you not there in the line of sight and uh you know you need to have that data point to be able to determine where your drone is flying and it and hopefully it doesn't Collide into anything right and then

**[21:17]** uh one of the most important part is fail saves so having those fail save mechanisms in place like what happens when the signal between the dock and the Drone is lost what happens if there's no internet connection what happens if the electricity shut all of these things need to be figured out by the rdoc software right so yeah that is where um air space awareness and flight safety needs to be taken care of and just to briefly sum this up J you know what you spoke about airspace awareness so during n as well we've been talking about how the year 2024 and the years coming forward are the years of drones and docking stations and eventually everything if they are currently happening in the visual line of sight space things will slowly move onto the bvos space and that is where flight safety and compliance really comes into the picture so whenever you're selecting um you know a software platform you need to ensure that all these things are in place uh because again flight safety is of uh

**[22:18]** the utmost importance all right so once you've uh you know perform multiple flights uh you need to go to a certain place you you are achieving your goals right you need to achieve the goals of your Enterprise now once you conclude your flight what do you typically do you need to revisit your flight you need to check what happened uh because a lot of times it might be a scheduled Mission um or sometimes you know the operator might not be paying attention to it so it becomes even more important to have flight logs report generated along with flight playback functionalities where you're able to see what the Drone did at every point in the mission now uh one thing is flight playback as I mentioned the other is flight log reporting now a lot of uh civil aviation authorities FAA U you know even around different geographies Malaysia they require uh you to share a set of flight log reports and that is when Flight log reports come in handy you can easily generate PDF format of

**[23:22]** the flight logs and share it with them and apart from that as I said collected data that you the data that you collect from your flights it is quite it's a crucial data and it it you you need to make sure it is not mishandled or you know it does not uh go to places where it shouldn't so that is when media syn to private cloud storage also comes in right along with having options to set up your own private Cloud Network on your own network or on premise Cloud solutions to make sure that your data is secure and you're able to uh also then go ahead and use the data for data processing and an analytics that is what we going to talk about next so now you've set up your docking station and the Drone you have your remote Operation Center in place along like the software um you you've perform you've been performing missions now finally the step is to integrate it with your Enterprise workflows now what does that mean essentially you set out to deploy a docum station with a goal right and

**[24:27]** that go goal wouldn't be completely achieved unless it does not solve the problem end to end right from flights to again uh collecting the data and then processing it can be one workflow then having an alert based system where the Drone can directly respond to the alert uh perform a couple of actions and then come back uh all of these end to-end workflows need to be taken care of that is the next step when it comes to achieving full autonomy and just to add to that g um you know having worked with with a lot of uh Enterprises you know uh FlytBase has been in the docking station industry for about five to six years now so uh you only real realize the true Roi of the entire solution when you become an ingredient part of the Enterprise workflow so let's say you have a very big Enterprise that's working in the security domain and unless and until your solution is not a part of their workflows they will not be able to realize the true

**[25:28]** potential of this technology for example a security uh for a security use case there is a requirement for scheduling Mission so let's say for 16 hours every day the Drone takes off every hour D does a remote flight comes back they would also need to ingest that drones video stream they probably already have a video management system can be genetic can be Milestone so having that video feed into your command center where your security guards are sitting and and viewing the CCTV feeds as well but also getting um you know a bird's eye view right and thirdly let's say they would probably have some U alarm based workflows or like Intruder detection they have a few zones that have been allocated in their uh area and somebody tries to enter that zone U usually if their current workflow would be that an alarmist triggered uh the guard would probably walk down or take a car and go to that location you would want to save precious time in these moments and um you know instead send a drone so that

**[26:32]** is where you become a part of their Enterprise workflows yeah and this is what you know uh this is where flings and automations come in handy uh this is something that was talked about in the keynote by my colleague amog as well so um it's nothing but you know having the ability to really integrate it into your workflows like as me mentioned alarms or live data sharing um and also to be able to to set a workflow for trigger actions so what does a drone do when it reaches this location or when it responds to an alert all of this entire workflow end to end can be detailed and can be set on the platform right um you know what Neil I think there's an alert on our HQ I'll just quickly share the flight based dashboard and we can see we can see it live in action you know enough of talking I'm want to FY the I always say to our clients as well seeing is believing in our industry so let's

**[27:34]** let's show you uh you know what can be done in such type of a scenario so just to give you some context this is the flight based dashboard this is our headquarters here back in India on the right you can see the docking stations video feed and J is now going to respond to an alert that we've received so this seems to be a u for we've used a simulation for this but uh uh you know in a security use case this might come in handy J can walk you through what he's exactly doing now right so as NE mentioned I got an alert around North block uh it is an L2 level severity alert so I just now need to send the Drone there and see what's going on so I just simply click on send drone and then I choose my drone and then I can configure what altitude it will fly at and then I'll simply click on launch now once I click launch I'll get a quick checklist so uh right like a pre-flight checklist like an sop I need to make sure I have the right rtk counts I have the safe location configured

**[28:34]** for emergency landing the health status of the devices is healthy and uh again um weather that is rainfall wind speed that is fine I have the geofin and no fly zones synced and perfectly in place now I'll just click execute all right right so now the Drone will proceed to that location and it will hover and I can then take manual control from my site right uh you can see on your left that you get all the detail Telemetry of the Drone in the dock here along with uh you know Weather Network and connections information and uh also you know uh if you have any operators your colleagues and Friends flying the Drone you can also see that as well right I think we are a little overtime and it looks like uh the demo gods did not

**[29:34]** work in our favor uh but what we can do is again like uh we have the recordings of the session as well so we'll make sure that we add something to it and show our audience how it's going to look like when it executes the alarm uh we can open uh the session for a few questions so we can take that SE Neil I think there are a few questions uh again in the chat box um the first question is what is the communication protocol used by the Drone to communicate with the doc so uh usually in the industry it is over radio frequency but there are also solutions that can make um you know uh the Drone independent that is by by implementing cellular technology so the Drone can be flying on 4G or 5G and in that case uh the communication can be done over Cloud right um then I think can I do mapping missions with FlytBase Neil would you like to

**[30:36]** take that sure uh you can certainly do mapping machines with flight basee we have uh a dedicated flight planning module for uh the mapping use case usually in mapping use case you would require grid missions where you can um you know set the grids the grid angles and make sure that you're capturing all that data we're also introducing uh ground sampling sampling distance front overlaps and side overlaps so that you're able to capture that data uh effectively and uh uh what we also uh do is we allow you to sync all that data to probably um you know a third party app that lets you analyze the the data that you've captured so let's say um you mapped an entire site now you want to create a 3D uh model out of it so that's something that um you know we allow you to do right that covers it we have one more question uh that does FlytBase also integrate with drones and like manufacturers other than DJI so this is from abishek

**[31:40]** uh yes we totally do so FlytBase as a platform is Hardware agnostic we are compatible with the range of uh drones and docking stations uh be it U you know DJI we also work with Adu pilot uh and pix off based drones so we totally compatible with other platforms as well um which what VMS do we do does FlytBase support so again in that case uh FlytBase is quite agnostic when it comes to supporting VMS but uh it also depends on what kind of uh data would you like to get shared over your VMS so for instance it can be video streaming which can be shared over rtsp RTM protocol um or you would also need sometime may need the Telemetry of the Drone uh over there so based on your needs uh you know FlytBase can definitely support multiple uh a variety of VMS

**[32:42]** Solutions um Gustavo has asked is gdu k01 compatible with FlytBase uh at the moment it is not but uh we are in talks with gdu uh I think they've got an amazing solution in place so we saw today um as well with Jack um yeah Neil you know what um while we were doing that uh while we were launching the Drone it is actually in air right now um so let me just quickly share my [Music] screen all right so uh as you launching the Drone to an alarm um it uh got a little delayed so we just thought we should take up questions first now I'm in the cockpit view of the flight based dashboard moving around the gimbal um I can also Mark annotations with the rangefinder now again U having an alarm alert based dispatch would mean that you need to um you know you are working in a public safety

**[33:44]** environment or you're responding to Something in which case having a range finder to know what's the distance between that object and the Drone where it's looking at is quite crucial and range finder allows you to do that now uh let me quickly take control of the Drone so I can just use my keyboard right now or I can choose to use a Thrust Master joystick but then yeah so I can fly around I can if I to zoom in to this to these bunch of cars right here I'll just quickly do that yeah so I can zoom in I can see know what kind of traffic is there uh something that was covered earlier today I think in uh you know a session from data from Sky about traffic monitoring analyis using AI so you can stream this video feed into a software like data from Sky where you can then run analytics and trajectory mapping of these vehicles as well right um I think we are quite overtime I'll just quickly return the Drone to the

**[34:48]** docking station and uh if you have any further questions regarding the platform regarding the session today please feel free to put them in the Q&A section uh you can also reach out to me or Neil at support fb.com we'll be happy to uh you know resolve any of the questions that you may have um yeah and with that we've come to the end of the session um we still have a bunch of sessions coming up uh there are panel discussions which will help you navigate the BV law space and uh also some crucial learnings when it comes to GMS and uh you know deployments so uh hope you enjoy the rest of the evening and have a nice day thank you yeah perfect and I think the Drone is about to land as well uh thanks audience for your time appreciate it I hope you were able to um you know uh learn a lot of things uh about autonomous drone operations and uh stay tuned for the other

**[35:50]** sessions as well and we enjoyed hosting you thank you and thank you and great day thanks J