[Overseas Drone News] First approval for "railroad patrol work" in non-visual flight using Skydio!

△ The top image shows the Skydio X2 taking off from the Skydio Dock ™ ️ (image credit: Skydio)

Hello readers! This is a foreign-affiliated drone company! The "Overseas Drone News," which has been updated weekly since last month, has already reached its fifth time. Until now, there have been a lot of unusual minor drone news, but this time we will deliver the hot news of Skydio Inc. of the United States, which is also a hot topic in Japan!

Table of contents

Skydio 2 Dock begins operation by America's largest railroad company

BNSF Railway has the largest railway network in the United States, spanning 28 states in the United States and three states in Canada, with a total of 52,300 kilometers. (As an aside, the total extension distance of JR as a whole is a little over 20,000km, so one company covers 2.5 times the distance of the JR group!)

On June 29, this year, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) allowed the BNSF Railway, which supports food, clothing and shelter in North America, to fly out of sight using a stationary drone dock for the first time. A drone dock is a stationary drone box that enables automatic takeoff and landing and automatic charging. And it was Skydio's "Skydio 2 Dock" announced in October 2019 that realized this initiative for the first time in the United States.

With this permit, BNSF Railway will allow staff and pilots to take off and land drones stored in docks from remote locations without ever having contact with the drone. Until now, no matter how much non-visual flight was allowed, it was necessary to carry the drone to the place where it took off and landed due to legal regulations. However, with the approval of the use of the docking station, it has become possible to remotely control even takeoff and landing. In other words, humans no longer have to be present at the scene.

△ You can see the drone taking off from Skydio Dock ™ ️. See cutting-edge technology like science fiction. (The video is from Skydio's official channel "Skydio Dock Tease")

How to use the dock by railroad inspection

There are three main plans for BNSF Railway to use the new remote control privileges approved this time.

The first is a patrol for security. It is a method to check if there is a security problem by monitoring the area around the marshalling yard provided for replacing vehicles, taking pictures of the main part regularly, and leaving image data.

Image credit: Skydio

This is an explanatory diagram in which Skydio2 performs regular security inspections, remote inspections, and analysis of stockpiles. You can see the staff watching the images and data streamed (!?) In real time on the screen.

The second is emergency response on the railroad tracks. When an accident occurs on the railroad track, by flying the drone, important image data is promptly provided to the staff and the problem is identified immediately.

Image credit: Skydio

It is an image diagram of a drone rushing from the dock in the event of an emergency. It can be seen that remote control is also performed here.

Finally, the third is the inspection of railway infrastructure such as bridges and railroad tracks. Perform regular inspections from the air to identify potential problems that require maintenance. By increasing the frequency of inspections, early prevention is possible.

Image Credit: BNSF Railway

To tell the truth, inspecting with a dedicated inspection vehicle is more suitable for finding small cracks like needles on rails. However, the distance that a dedicated inspection vehicle can travel in a day is limited. BNSF Railway inspects frequently used trunk lines on a daily basis, but not local branch lines.

Furthermore, it is almost impossible for the company to inspect the 13,000 bridges and 89 tunnels owned by the company with high frequency by human hands, so automatic and regular inspections using drones have become important. It's coming.

52,300 kilometers of sky targeted for non-visual flight

The approval is that BNSF Railway will be applied nationwide to all types of missions that BNSF Railway wants to use in its daily operations, not just in specific areas and periods, as in past demonstration experiments. It's a big point.

This is the first time that FAA has issued a flight permit for actual work beyond the framework of a demonstration experiment. This is a big point not only for the United States but also for the drone industry in the world!

Operation takes place 100 feet or less (about 30 meters) from the ground or obstacles, minimizing the risk of encountering manned aircraft. It was also allowed to fly in all airspace of BNSF Railway's private land as long as it was more than 3 nautical miles (about 5.5 kilometers) away from the airport. In other words, the sky over 52,300 kilometers is equivalent to a non-visual flight OK!

According to the FAA's permission, the permission for this non-visual flight is "this waiver is valid for two years until June 19, 2023", so it is confusing, but "for two years, I'm doing a non-visual flight. That's it! " It's too amazing, America! !!

What happens to Japan's out-of-sight flight?

As some of you may know, in fact, the realization of non-visual flight has already come to that point in Japan.

In the "Roadmap for the Industrial Revolution in the Sky" set by the government, the goal is to realize non-visual flight in manned areas in 2022. Over the past three years, drone-related law revisions have progressed in rapid succession, such as making it mandatory to register drone owner information, making drones with national licenses, and invalidating land owners' air rights.

This year is the fifth year of the final year of the DRESS project (official name: project to realize an energy-saving society in which robots and drones play an active role), which NEDO has been conducting as a five-year project. Demonstration experiments with an eye on LEVEL 4 starting next year will be conducted at the same time in 10 local governments nationwide!

Editor's Note

Drone inspection has a great cost reduction effect, and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism also has a drone from the viewpoint of budget reduction and labor saving in infrastructure inspection managed by the country such as bridges and slopes in the "Basic Plan for Extending Infrastructure Life". We are beginning to encourage the active use of.

However, it is "automation of inspection" that can be expected to have a greater effect.

The process of getting permission in the United States is actually an extension of the "Integrated Pilot Program" called IPP, which started around the same time as the DRESS project in Japan. Since the project of IPP ended once last year and this announcement was made the following year, it is not hard to imagine that Japan will make a similar announcement next year.

With whom Japanese railway companies will realize "automation of inspections"? I am looking forward to seeing what the battle that has begun under the water will look like.

In his twenties, he is an AD of a TV program production company, and is in charge of information variety programs during the golden time. From the monthly salary of 160,000 and 0 days a week, he turns into a Japanese subsidiary of a foreign-affiliated company. Although he is a drone company, he is famous for not being able to fly drones. His nickname is "Talking Bazooka" in the drone industry. We will deliver overseas drone news!