UL’s drone-based autonomous application at 5G logistics project Event
Unmanned Life was invited to attend the 5G logistics project’s demo event at The Bristol Port Company
26th of May 2022 – Unmanned Life was invited to attend the 5G logistics project’s demo event at The Bristol Port Company as part of a consortium of 15 partners led by West of England Combined Authority. The ambitious initiative finally came to its fruition and CEO, Nicholas Zylberglajt, CTO Kim Clement and VP of Business and Marketing, Jorge Munoz along with other team members introduced the live demonstration of our drone-based autonomous application for optimised operations of smart ports.
The morning kicked off with our CTO, Kim Clement presenting our unique platform and its technical capabilities to all the partner and guests. He also gave a tour of the demo and showcased how our platform enables seamless orchestration of robotics.
“Collaboration is the foundation of commercializing these technologies and we need a strong and robust network for seamless orchestration of robotics which makes partnership with Telcos an integral part of our company” said Kim Clement, CTO – Unmanned Life
In the afternoon, our VP of Business and Marketing, Jorge Muñoz did the use case demo introduction for automated drone surveillance and emergency response highlighting how 5G enabled robotics can support operations at Bristol Port, exhibiting a smart and dynamic smart port environment.
By exploring new ways for 5G to boost operations in and around Bristol port, we displayed our drone-based autonomous solutions in 2 use cases: 1) The deployment of 5G enabled autonomous drones for port security and inspection 2) Geo-fenced Monitoring and tracking.
In the first use case, Inspection and surveillance was conducted by using an off the shelf drone controlled and managed by Unmanned Life’s software platform. The operator could set a desired geo-fence perimeter that marks the operational boundaries for the drone, preventing it from crossing those boundaries during the autonomous mission. Overlaid with our unique AI analytics, smart threat detection is powered which alerts the system to any identified anomalies.
The drone for this use case was equipped with a camera as a payload and was orchestrated to carry out surveillance tasks with three different surveillance modalities:
- On demand surveillance
- Pre-planned routes and surveillance rounds
- Event triggered surveillance
This allows flexibility for operators to modify the surveillance task based on their requirements for e.g., missions can be set and stored by the operator and deployed on fixed time-intervals/set times or the operator can choose to launch the mission for on demand surveillance providing real time live video feed on the interface. The software platform was integrated with existing security systems (supplied by third parties), allowing an operator or a specific event or detection to trigger an autonomous UAV launch to provide a bird’s eye view at a specified place and give the operator real-time context of the situation.
Unmanned Life also teamed with the University of Bristol to showcase autonomous drone-based Geo-fenced monitoring and tracking in our second use case. A trigger was sent to Unmanned Life’s platform prompting the drones to autonomously deploy to the specified area using geo positioning in the trigger. Upon reaching the designated location, the drone equipped with camera provided a bird’s eye view of the area that could be viewed through our web interface.
Later in the afternoon our CEO, Nicholas Zylberglajt took part in a panel discussion where he talked about the challenges we face in the automation world like regulations, public acceptance, health and safety and how we overcome them step by step. He also emphasized on the power of partnership with big Telcos to achieve the future we are all seeking.
It is great to see this grand initiative finally come to its fruition. These type of projects allow us to learn more about the practicalities of 5G and MEC deployment and work with top-notch experts and public authorities. Working hand in hand with regulators is key to facilitate the mass adoption of our technology and this type of projects is a great forum for that.”said Nicholas Zylberglajt, CEO of Unmanned Life
The use of emerging technologies such as 5G and edge computing are critical to our mission as they allow smooth operations for our hybrid logistics platform. Unmanned Life uniquely offers the integration and fleet management of a mixture of autonomous drones and mobile robots, and the ultra-reliable low latency communications (uRLLC) allows seamless orchestration between the two. 5G is important to enhance the solution’s capabilities, allowing for live video streaming and real-time video analysis.
With this demonstration we successfully displayed the power of 5G, AI and Robotics in enabling smart, efficient, and productive solutions to ensure optimum Port operations. But this does not end here as our unique technology can provide advanced automation, self-optimization of process improvements, and, most importantly, a new degree of efficiency and responsiveness to customers that was previously not possible. The only direction for us is FORWARD and we are pacing at a high speed!
About Unmanned Life: Unmanned Life is changing the way robots are being deployed by providing seamless orchestration of autonomous robotics with its Autonomy-as-a-Service software platform. Unmanned Life integrates different technologies, such as AI, 5G, and Edge computing with multiple robots, like drones and/or autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and a variety of capabilities to enable autonomous robotics operations across multiple industries in particular, Industry 4.0 and Smart Cities.
