In a world where blame claims are the norm and health and safety has gone mad, drones seem to make perfect sense for a number of risky tasks. One such area of risk to a company that could be eliminated is aerial work. Reducing the need for employees to climb to great heights to carry out inspections or maintenance work would greatly decrease the odds of injury.
Amazon has been vocal about their future hopes of using drones to same day deliver packages to their Prime customers, whilst postal services in some European countries have launched drone trials to see if the idea is feasible. Nokia and BT have also announced plans to get in on drone trials to inspect and repair their networks.
The idea is a brilliant one; drones armed with cameras can fly up and inspect telephone lines and mobile masts without any risk to staff. They also have the ability to get a view that the engineer just wouldn’t be able to. As well as safety aspects, drones are much quicker and more efficient and can be used for inspections, radio planning, line-of-sight testing, and network optimisation.
Nokia have actually gone as far as to run a trial in the UAE, sending drones carrying smartphones to inspect towers, help with radio planning and line of sight between radio towers. Nokia felt that their ‘Telco’ drone trial was a success. They offered a number of advantages over human employees on the trial tasks. With the help of an app installed on the handsets the drones carried, they were able to automatically submit test data to be processed at Nokia.
BT is yet to run any physical trial, but see a lot of potential in the idea. Head of customer innovation for BT, Matthew Key says: “With a little creativity, drones could change the world.”
While Nokia have merely been running tests, BT are planning ways in which this technology could carry out physical repairs as well as delivering urgent parts to engineers on site, increasing productivity and customer satisfaction. It would also allow BT to gauge the severity of any disaster, such as a flood, to ascertain what needs to be done to get everything back up and running in the quickest possible time.
As Matthew Key himself said, drones have the potential to change everything. There will, of course, be an impact on the human element with a reduction in human staff required to carry out the jobs that drones take over. In time, with more creativity, drones could even be used to provide temporary internet access if there was ever a problem in the network, as well as providing an internet connection to large events. They will also be hugely useful in rural, hard to reach areas able to get there quickly and diagnose faults as well as delivering much needed parts quickly.
Nokia found the drones to be useful in designing the network, detecting interferences in a frequency being used by tress etc and determining power requirements. Whilst Nokia were not the first to utilise drones for network maintenance, they have certainly got people thinking.
As with the majority of new technologies, rules and regulations will need to be relaxed in order for these ideas to become a reality. At present, UK law dictates that drones must remain within the clear sight of their operators. The increased threat of terrorism will be a huge hurdle in the way of BT’s plans, but it’s clear to see that drones have amazing potential to improve safety and increase productivity.