Jud McCranie, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Unleash live teams with Musk’s Starlink to enable remote drone flights
By Jim Magill
Unleash live, an Australia-based developer of video data analysis platforms, has partnered with Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink to connect to drones and navigate in real time via a satellite link.
By accessing the Starlink network of communications satellites in low earth orbit, an Unleash Live team at the company’s headquarters in Sydney was recently able to control the operation of a drone that flies in a remote location on Australia’s east coast about 200 km away. With the low latency connection and Unleash live’s Autofly software, the team successfully tested the drone’s ability to implement two real-time artificial intelligence apps: people counting and tracking and power line fault detection.
After three months of testing, Unleash live released a beta version of the software package for its customers.
The partnership with Musk’s Starlink will greatly expand the ability of drone operators to conduct inspections of energy infrastructure assets such as electrical transmission lines, oil and gas pipelines and wind farms in remote locations where 4G and 5G connectivity is not available, Unleash live CEO, Das said Co-founder Hanno Blankenstein in an interview.
“This enables two things: On the one hand, the data from the drone can be delivered in high quality and at high speed to an office location or a remote expert,” he said.
“The second element we offer is the ability to interact with the drone in the field,” says Hanno. “We can navigate the drone for better inspection and operational clarity while the drone is in the air.”
With launches being carried out by its sister company SpaceX, Starlink is building a constellation of satellites that orbit above the earth to provide Internet connections around the globe. By August, the company had about 1,600 satellites in orbit and plans to operate a total of 42,000.
“There is a live map on the internet that shows you satellite coverage around the world. About 30 to 40% of the world is covered by high bandwidth, low latency broadband, ”said Blankenstein. Musk’s company plans to expand this coverage to 99% to 100% of the world within the next year.
Leveraging the satellite network to enable drones to transmit video data in near real-time will become a tipping point for energy companies when inspecting and maintaining distant assets, Blankenstein said. The Starlink network covers the North Sea, where both Ireland and Scotland have large wind farms, as well as the Gulf of Mexico with its thousands of oil and gas production platforms.
“Imagine you have an energy company in Texas that doesn’t have terrestrial broadband coverage. You can stream the data from this remote location to your Houston headquarters with millisecond latency, ”said Blankenstein.
Unleash live has provided three levels of control for operators with remote access to the drone, which is provided via the Starlink connection. “One is having zero control. The pilot in the field does everything himself. The second level is the camera control. The pilot in the field is still in command, but gimbal controls are passed to the remote laptop in the office, ”he said. “You are essentially the photographer.”
In the third access level, the remote pilot can control both the camera and the navigation of the drone. To achieve this level of control, remote drone operators must obtain beyond-line-of-sight certification (BVLOS) from the aviation authorities in their respective countries. Unleash live has hired independent consulting firms to work with the Civil Aviation Standards Authority in Australia as well as the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to obtain BVLOS certification to enable remote operations on a case-by-case basis, Blankenstein said.
Cooperation with partners
Unleash live operates primarily in Australia and the United States, with smaller offices in Europe, the United Kingdom and Asia. In addition to its agreement with Starlink, the company is working closely with a number of international drone manufacturers, information technology companies and telecommunications companies to deliver its services to its customers, Blankenstein said.
Two drone manufacturers, DJI and Skydio, put the UAV platforms for the operation of Unleash live. The company is deploying DJI’s Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced drone line at multiple utility customer locations, where the UAVs collect thermal and high-resolution images that are streamed back to Unleash’s live headquarters. The video streaming company also uses DJI Matrice 300 RTK drones to conduct inspections of wind turbines and large industrial conveyor belts.
“The second company we work closely with is Skydio for high-resolution and automated video and image streaming,” said Blankenstein.
In addition to leveraging Starlink’s satellite network, Unleashed Live is also working with terrestrial telecom operators like Verizon’s Skyward to provide high bandwidth and highly secure corporate 5G networks to deliver data live to Unleash’s customers. Outside the US, the company works with international telecommunications providers, including Deutsche Telekom AG in Europe, Vodaphone in the UK and Optus in Asia. “These strong partnerships allow our customers to choose between secure, enterprise-class networks for their data,” he said.
Last month, Amazon Web Services named Unleash live as an AWS Energy Competency Partner. The label indicates that Amazon recognizes the company’s ability of video data to “enable energy producers around the world to build and operate assets efficiently and safely while at the same time working towards the transition to a lower carbon world,” it said in a statement from Amazon.
Read more in-depth insights from Jim Magill: Dronut with no exposed propellers, flying cars, drone mapping software, and drones for spraying plants.
Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with nearly a quarter of a century of experience relating to technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring as Senior Editor at S&P Global Platts in December 2019, Jim began writing about new technologies such as artificial intelligence, robots, and drones and their contribution to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has been featured in the Houston Chronicle, US News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, an Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International publication.
Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, a professional marketplace for drone services, and a passionate observer of the emerging drone industry and regulatory environment for drones. Author of over 3,000 articles focusing on the commercial drone space, Miriam is an international speaker and recognized figure in the industry. Miriam graduated from the University of Chicago and has over 20 years experience in high-tech sales and marketing for emerging technologies.
For advice or writing on the drone industry, email Miriam.
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