SkyBound Rescuer Trial a Latest Automated Drone Service Across the West Midlands: Smoothing Traffic and Public Transportation Delays
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SkyBound Rescuer is on the forefront of public safety drone use. Internationally recognized founder and CEO Gemma Alcock is a thought leader in search and rescue (SAR) drone operations and using drones for community safety, expanding the use cases and value of aerial imagery within the U.K. and beyond.
Now, SkyBound Rescuer has announced the trial of a brand new fully automated drone service for Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) – one which guarantees to assist resolve a significant problem for cities and towns across the globe. SkyBound Rescuer have installed an automatic drone station in Walsall, designed to assist smooth transportation across bus, train, road and tram networks.
The trial has been an amazing success – not only demonstrating the worth and safety case for automated drones in management and transportation systems, but even helping TfWM discover and monitor an ongoing public safety incident.
“It was incredibly exciting to showcase our technology in an actual operational environment for the primary time – and to see it add value to the Walsall communities in a big way in its first week was an enormous achievement.”
Beyond CCTV
Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) currently use greater than 2,500 fixed CCTV cameras to watch the bus, train, road, and tram network across the West Midlands region. It’s a classy system: the state-of-the-art CCTV control room works alongside the Regional Transport Coordination Centre to assist manage transport disruptions across the West Midlands. TfWM also cooperates with local government to watch CCTV cameras within the town center, to assist authorities cope with automotive accidents and other emergencies.
Now, SkyBound Rescuer is adding on-demand eyes within the sky to the CCTV data – able to answer emergencies in about 5 minutes, greater than 3X faster than is typical for a manned aircraft response.
The Technology Behind the Latest Service
From the SkyBound Rescuer press release:
SkyBound Rescuer has built software, called the SkyBound Coordinator, that robotically creates data-driven drone mission plans. By simply completing a flight request form, which takes a median of 49 seconds to finish, the algorithms generate a mission plan for optimal safety and performance. This type also generates other automated decisions, corresponding to assigning a risk-based priority level to the flight. The algorithms behind this software are a results of SkyBound’s 7 years of research and data. This software has been integrated with automated drone station (ADS) technology, which is basically a high-tech box that the drone sits in and it enables a precision take-off and landing, it recharges the drone without having to remove the battery, and it creates a web hotspot in order that mission plans may be sent remotely. Put simply, it makes the drone fully self-sufficient. This mixture of SkyBound’s software and ADS technology signifies that the end-to-end flight is fully automated, and the humans-in-the-loop can dedicate their attention to monitoring the flight and/or imagery as an alternative. This approach makes for a less expensive drone service, in addition to speeding up response and creating standardised, repeatable, and measurable performance.
During this trial service, the flights are being overseen by a suitably qualified distant pilot situated in SkyBound’s Southampton-based control room. The drone can be remaining inside visual line of sight of an onsite distant safety pilot. The drone is flying from the rooftop of Walsall bus station several times a day and feeding images from the drone into the CCTV control room. Notably, SkyBound created a 3D model of the Walsall town centre and a database of transport points of interest (POI). Their software uses this intelligence to automate protected transit routes to the POIs, ensuring the drone stays inside visual line of sight from the onsite distant safety pilot and avoids intentional overflight of individuals.
Week 1 Trial Results
SkyBound Rescuer is all in regards to the data: they report that response to a flight request took on average 5 minutes 44 seconds: an enormous improvement over the service level agreement for the National Police Air Service, which is quarter-hour to priority 1 calls for service.
While traffic is a significant problem for any populated area, TfWM also leveraged the drone data for public safety.
Importantly, whilst flying across the town centre, an altercation was observed on the CCTV cameras by TfWM’s fully trained Security Industry Association CCTV operators. Consequently, TfWM instructed SkyBound Rescuer to make use of the drone to realize “eyes on” to help with monitoring the situation. SkyBound’s software enables every pixel in its video stream to be quickly situated in the true world – e.g. its What3Words location – which lets you click on an activity within the video, locate it, mark it on a map, label it, photograph it and timestamp it throughout the recorded footage – all inside a click of a button; these functionalities were put to good use during this incident. Anything captured of an evidential nature shall be stored and retained as is completed for fixed CCTV footage.
The Big Picture
SkyBound Rescuer are working with TfWM to judge the final result of the trial to potentially expand upon the coverage of this service across the West Midlands region. The corporate hopes to implement a national network of automated drones that may offer rapid response to high-risk areas, monitor transportation networks, and more.
“We’ve conducted a whole bunch of test flights in preparation for this trial service to optimise performance and safety, which is on the very forefront of each flight that we do at SkyBound,” says Alcock. “Also, we at SkyBound Rescuer focus solely on drone use cases that may improve society, so we’re excited to be using our technology to profit the Walsall community by enhancing the estate of fixed CCTV cameras.”
Kerry Blakeman, Head of Security and Policing of Transport for West Midlands, says: “Eight months ago we arrange our own dedicated inhouse drone team to explore the advantages of drone technology. We’re delighted to be partnering with SkyBound Rescuer to explore the potential of automated drone technology which is able to revolutionise the CCTV industry. The team at SkyBound Rescuer have been meticulous of their planning of this trial to deliver a protected and effective trial to permit us to judge the advantages of the ADS.”
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