OUR SUCCESS STORIES

Nestled within Europe’s second-largest port, an exceptional partnership unfolded, uniting Unmanned Life and AWS to craft an innovative enterprise application. At its core, a fleet of drones took flight, embarking on autonomous missions empowered by cutting-edge 5G technology. This seamless integration not only enabled precise command and control but also facilitated real-time data exchange at an unprecedented pace.

A dedicated 5G network acted as the digital conduit, streaming live video feeds from these drones to an intuitive interface. Operators gained a bird’s-eye view of port activities, enhancing situational awareness. The innovation continued with AWS Snowball, analyzing the video stream in real-time to detect human presence. Swift and accurate, this analysis triggered immediate alarms for any security breaches. This collaboration showcased the potential of merging expertise, painting a picture of a safer, more connected future for port operations as 5G-powered drones patrolled the skies.

Unmanned Life has achieved a significant milestone by effectively showcasing the coordinated and independent operation of a group of hybrid robots. Their innovative platform smoothly coordinates the activation of a FrankaEmikaPanda robotic arm, an MIR 100 Autonomous Mobile Robot, and a ModalAI drone, enabling them to collaborate seamlessly as a unified team within a package delivery scenario. This achievement not only demonstrates the technical prowess of Unmanned Life but also serves as a compelling showcase of their capabilities in addressing the growing challenge of fragmented robotics within the industrial landscape. This successful demonstration underscores their commitment to providing a comprehensive solution that bridges the gaps in robotic technologies, thereby advancing the field and opening doors to new possibilities

To enable a new age of end-to-end reforestation, drones need to map areas, to assess growth suitability, plant trees, and monitor their growth rates and health.

Our autonomous applications for both the mapping and monitoring aspects have been tested in a remote forestry environment in Canada. For this, a fleet of drones performed the applications, with real-time autonomous command and control via mobile network backhauled by Starlink. The photographic data captured by the drones was then visualised by a third-party GIS system for analysis.

This pioneering use case was our first Beyond Visual Line of Sight deployment, enabled by command and control via the platform over the mobile network

Come rain, snow, or shine, this application was and will be, a major part of our initiative to address climate change and promote sustainability using drones.

This landmark EU R&D Industry-wide project with leading industrial players demonstrates how 5G connectivity improves the productivity of industrial and manufacturing processes, in the intralogistics space with Autonomous Mobile Robots to test and deploy indoor logistics use cases using a fleet of AMRs. This project is showcasing the need for 5G connectivity for advanced Industry 4.0 solutions for large-scale swarms of robots.

Unmanned Life is collaborating with an industrial robotics partner in developing a NetApp that will allow an autonomous mobile robot fleet to localize in indoor environments and use a centralized command centre to deploy these assets over 5G and EDGE infrastructures for a logistics-based use case in a Factory of the future setting.

5G!Drones is an EU program to deploy 5G-enabled autonomous drones-powered use cases around Europe. The EU has selected Unmanned Life’s 5G standardized architecture and software technology as the project’s default architecture and platform for operating commercial autonomous drone services.

The purpose of this scenario is to demonstrate the benefits of 5G from autonomous drone deployments, whilst testing 5G connectivity. A series of network tests, run from the drones themselves, will show the available bandwidth and latency that 5G generates. 

Validating these 5G networks is important, as 5G allows smooth operations for our fleet management capabilities. Unmanned Life uniquely offers the integration and fleet management of a mixture of autonomous drones and robots, and the ultra-reliable low latency communications (uRLLC) allow the seamless orchestration. As well as this, the high-capacity nature of 5G allows us to control robotic swarms, which were previously unavailable on lower capacity 4G, unlocking scalability for exponential growth.

GOF 2.0 is an EU Leading R&D project involving key industrial players acting in the developing of the European drone ecosystem, showcasing the technical means to enable the exchange of digital information in support of collaborative management of UAM operations and remote provision of U-space/ATM services

The role of Unmanned Life is to define and implement interfaces and mechanisms by which simulated data for both manned and unmanned flights can be injected into the GOF2.0 systems. Simulated aircraft will be used to augment select scenarios, demonstrating the benefits of autonomous flights and their connection with Unmanned Traffic Management systems. The results we already see, and hope to continue to observe, will pave the way for autonomy, and safe, efficient regulation around Europe.

The goal of this project was to demonstrate autonomous drone-based inspections of cell towers in a safer, faster, and more cost-effective way than current manual processes.

Unmanned Life’s platform orchestrated and deployed the autonomous mission for the drone, including complex pathing which maintained distance for optimal imaging. 4G LTE and a high-definition camera were both utilised and provided the means to capture stable photos throughout the mission.

Following the deployment, the collected image data was transferred to a third-party platform to create a digital twin of the towers.

This deployment demonstrated the scalability of the use case through automation, the efficiency of using drones as data-capture methods, and the benefits of integration to third-party AI systems for end-to-end processes.

In this project, Unmanned Life demonstrates a kit consisting of a drone and a compact control device, which can fly in a confined space simulating a warehouse. The drone flies along the racks, identifies individual boxes and reads the QR codes attached to them to create a virtual map of all the goods in the racks with their identification and position.

The deployed indoor inventory management utilises edge computing to demonstrate the future benefits of the technology. Simply, by locating the computational power required for image recognition of boxes at the edge of the network, we can off-load data analysis, moving away from a physical unit on the device, and therefore reducing the weight of the drone, increasing flight times. 

The underlying capabilities of this use case will pave the way for scaled fleets of drones in the near future, whilst also demonstrating the benefits of the platform in an indoor, inventory management environment.

The goal of the project was to create an autonomous search and rescue solution which brings together state-of-the-art technology such as automatic drones, artificial intelligence, 5G and Edge computing enabling a more scalable and efficient solution to assist the fire and rescue department in helping the people of Vienna.  

Once the mission was launched by the first responders, the platform segmented the incident zone, and two autonomous scouting drones were launched. The live video feed from the drones streamed to the interface over Magenta’s network, was overlaid with artificial intelligence for person detection, inciting a response from the platform when the individual was spotted in the river. An immediate response was set by the platform; to launch a heavier-duty drone carrying a life jacket, which was released beside the victim.

Not only does the solution demonstrate the end-to-end nature of search and rescue, but it shows the benefits to existing responders through heightened situational awareness, safer response mechanisms, and faster rescue.

5G Logistics is a UK marquee R&D project, hosted in Bristol Port, to develop new technologies in the Smart Ports sector that utilise an underlying 5G private network and edge computing.

There were two key use cases that Unmanned Life’s orchestration platform performed:

Security Surveillance: A swarm of drones, augmented with 5G, and AI for person detection, performed surveillance of the port perimeter, highlighting any intruders on the interface. This was performed ad-hoc, or on a timer.

Tracked Asset Response: Unmanned Life’s platform was integrated into an RFID-based system in the port. Simply, when assets are being loaded/unloaded without authorisation, our platform is notified, and a drone is triggered to autonomously fly to the precise location. By providing a bird’s eye view of the affected asset, the port can be kept situationally aware, prevent asset theft, or improve logistical processes.