Honeywell is launching its commercial Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Inspection and Data Analytics Service in India. Targeted at utilities and oil and gas companies, the new service is designed to help customers across the country improve and modernize critical structural inspections. Using UAVs to carry out this work and collate necessary data reduces the need for employees to conduct inspections manually, which in turn increases safety by eliminating many of the risks associated with dangerous structural examinations.
“Our UAV inspection and data analytics service for India will help industrial businesses to advance their operations by offering a cost-effective solution to a difficult and often dangerous process,” said Brad Westphal, UAV business leader, Honeywell Aerospace. “With new UAV regulations coming into effect in India, we expect the UAV inspection and data analytics services market to expand rapidly. We look forward to collaborating with customers, and are excited to improve operations in India by enabling our software and data solutions to analyze, predict or prevent outages and structural issues.”
The service leverages Honeywell’s century-long experience in flight management, safety and software, and combines key insight derived from the company’s diverse industrial portfolio. The result is a data-driven analytics and information service designed to reduce costs and enhance efficiency.
Recent regulatory changes will allow the service to be launched across India. Since its global launch in 2017, Honeywell has assisted with the inspections of more than 240 kilometers of power lines, 1,000+ acres of solar farms and has overseen 100+ flare inspections.
Honeywell’s UAV Inspection Service uses a three-step process to conduct inspections and deliver data analytics to industrial companies. In the first phase, Honeywell works with the customer to plan the inspection and finalize the UAV’s flight plan, ensuring regulatory compliance. Next, Honeywell’s UAV pilots perform the inspection using autonomous flight management software, capturing thousands of images and raw data along the way. Finally, the images and data captured are run through Honeywell’s data analytics software, which is specially designed to sort, organize and tag the inspection data.
The analytical software used as part of the service uses machine learning algorithms to identify potential hazards such as vegetation encroachment or hardware defects, and allows the customer to prioritize them based on how urgently they need attention. When the process is complete, all the imagery and findings are delivered to the customer through a web portal that they can access anytime, anywhere.