Best Practice

Drones Platform

Surfing the Internet of Things opportunities.

Scenario

Blue Reply has matured many years of experience in the automotive industry, as well as in the aerospace and defence sectors. Benefiting from the functional knowledge gained, the company has structured a range of products and services, offering customers strategic and highly-functional consulting, and subsequently focusing the needs on the technical context that best suits the client’s landscape.

In recent years drones have played a very significant role in our society in various fields: from the logistics sector, providing support to inventory activities, to the security/military sector for the inspection of areas that are hazardous or difficult to access. In many of these areas, the drones are controlled by computer systems which can estimate their position, thanks to on-board sensors such as GPS units and accelerometers, thus providing full remote control of the devices. 

The possible fields of application include:

  • Photogrammetric surveys

  • Inspection of buildings, towers, bridges and other, similar structures

  • “Search and Rescue” tasks in inaccessible or dangerous (fires, floods) areas

  • Irrigation or sowing of agricultural areas

  • Goods delivery services

  • Automatic asset inventories (indoor or outdoor)

  • Support for human activities, such as the “Follow-me” scenario for accompanying people in business departments unknown to them.

The solution

The Blue Reply Manufacturing business unit offers customers a cloud platform designed to speed up the release of business solutions based on the use of drones with autonomous navigation capabilities in different contexts and scenarios.

The Drones Platform is an architectural solution designed to manage drone fleets, providing services for the control and autonomous navigation of these devices. Thanks to the features made available, the drones can be used in different contexts including agriculture, delivery, inventory, inspection and more.

Within the Industrie 4.0 realm, Blue Reply relies on this platform to help companies develop Business Drone Applications through proofs of concept or complete and flexible solutions designed to adapt to meet the customer’s business requirements.

Discover the key features of the platform

Connectivity

Thanks to the use of 4G / LTE connections, the platform remains connected through the exchange of IoT messages.

Custom Dashboard

In terms of control and configuration, the platform offers various dashboards for managing the drone fleet; users can change the composition of the fleet, plan and save flight routes and monitor missions (map locations, flight parameters, life parameters, streaming videos).

Outdoor autonomous navigation

Autonomous flight support, the strength of the solution, is designed in such a way as to be highly configurable, as well as easily integrated with the customer’s requirements; to this end, the experience gained by Blue Reply can certainly support the customer in choosing the best collision avoidance algorithms on the market.

Payload

The versatility and modularity of the solution facilitates the rapid addition of new, on-board devices such as RFID readers, camcorders and thermal imaging cameras, parachutes, water / crop sprayers, mechanical arms (servo grippers) or magnetic arms (electro magnet grippers).

Predictive analytics

The analytics component, which is also integrated into the solution, provides the user with effective support in the post-hoc analysis of the data collected, with the objective of collecting information useful for the improvement of the company’s business (e.g. Predictive Maintenance).

Integration

The real-time integration of information available in corporate systems (ERP, warehouse, etc.) has been provided for within the platform with the aim of enriching and improving the management of business processes and/or the mission configured on the drone.

Due to its characteristics of flexibility, adaptability and ease of configuration, this solution is ideal for all manufacturing customers looking to support core corporate functions with a ready-to-use, technical solution, aimed at improving the efficiency of processes and minimising human errors. Thanks to this solution, Blue Reply is helping to change the way the customer sees their business, by expanding horizons that until recently seemed finished and preordained. 

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Blue Reply is the Reply Group company specialised in digital transformation through services, consulting and the implementation of solutions based on IBM technologies, of which it is a Gold Business Partner. Within the Industrie 4.0 realm, Blue Reply’s Manufacturing business unit helps companies develop Business Drone Applications using Cloud and IoT-based technologies.