Drone and AI surveillance for ports

“We are delighted to be taking part in this exciting project to help map out the future for intelligent drone technology and the benefits it can bring to port customers,” said Harm van Weezel, chief information officer, ABP.

Unmanned surveillance

The new funding made available via research agency UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) looks to help achieve an ambitious vision for the UK’s future drone economy.

As part of the project, Associated British Ports (ABP), Kier Highways, Connected Places Catapult, RoboK, Herotech8 and BT are all working together to build and test the use of drones to carry out automatic ‘beyond visual line of sight’ (BVLOS) missions.

Specifically, the project will demonstrate value in three use case areas for ports and highways, including landside port operations and management, marine operations and highway safety and defect inspections.

The ambition for the project is to create efficient, low-carbon, cost-effective solutions for infrastructure management with Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and practically showcase opportunities for ports and highways to use ‘drones as a service’.

Using AI and data analytics, the project will develop the InDePTH platform offering seamless integration from UAS imagery, through operational systems, to actionable insights.

A key aim of the project is to enable near real-time data transfer from capture to insight generation. Close collaboration between the two end users ABP and Kier will engage different industries with very similar requirements, sharing best practices and physical demonstrations.

Digital twins of ports and highways will be built and used with real-time data from drones to give a rich picture of current operations, incidents and asset condition. AI will be applied to analyse drone imagery in several use cases, including maritime infrastructure inspection, reactive ad-hoc flights to quickly identify and inspect hazards both on land and over water.