AiRXOS, a General Electric Affiliate that’s specialises in providing Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) solutions has announced an Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) solution for energy companies to plan, schedule, operate and monitor all facets of their UAS operations from a single platform.

In the energy industry, drones are mainly trusted for their safety in inspecting application across the value chain, like power grids, towers and even on solar farms; among many other applications the drones can be used for.

AiRXOS’ new Enterprise Energy Solution provides digital compliance, full Situational Awareness of airspace and assets, inspection, emergency response/disaster recovery capabilities, analytics, and asset performance tools all in one, connected platform,” the company said in a statement. “The Enterprise Energy Solution will run on AiRXOS’ Air Mobility Platform – a secure, cloud-based, extensible platform that enables easy integration of an energy organisation’s current applications and other UAS service providers, as well as supports the full lifecycle of UAS Energy operations.”

Mark Lanphear, AiRXOS’ Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Business Development added. “Infrastructure inspections with traditional manned aircraft are dangerous, inefficient, and expensive. Now more than ever energy organisations are looking for solutions to help them deliver safe, scalable, and repeatable operations for greater economic viability.  To achieve scale, they need a centralised and standardised view of all operations, manned and unmanned. 

“It’s why we developed the Enterprise Energy Solution – to deliver a truly comprehensive platform that brings all UAS lifecycle operations into one view – from enterprise wide infrastructure inspection and surveillance, to asset and crew management, situational awareness and emergency operations after a natural disaster – all on one platform.”

The new platform allows energy companies to combine and integrate all critical inspection needs in one connected ecosystem with automated and feature-rich technology with capabilities that include: Automated Waiver, Exemption and Certificate of Authorisation (COAs) for safer, faster flying, partner-enabled mission-ready kits with sensors, drones, and pilots as a service, emergency response and disaster recovery application with mass alerts, digital SGI and complete situational awareness, compliance and crew management for reliability and transparency, asset management and security to optimize assets, analytics and insights for near real time actionable intelligence, and program design services to help energy companies launch and grow programs.

Below is the list of new features that the new air mobility platform offers, according to the supplier:

Operational Oversight in One Platform

AiRXOS’ Air Mobility Platform is a highly secure, cloud-based platform that enables energy organisations to plan, schedule and monitor all facets of UAS operations from a single platform, providing all the tools needed to fly quickly, and with complete confidence in safety operations. Includes full visibility to airspace and assets, inspection and emergency response capabilities, analytics, and asset performance tools.

Compliant, Safe Flight Solutions

AiRXOS enhances UAS operations efficiency with the development of solutions, supporting processes, training, and procedures to enable advanced UAS flights and help energy organizations obtain the necessary FAA Waivers, Exemptions, and Certificates of Authorizations (COAs), Special Governmental Interest (SGIs) to perform inspections faster.

Central Command Centre

AiRXOS’ Enterprise Solution provides for public safety agency coordination, situational awareness of UAS operations, streaming live video, data and operational insights, automated SGI compliance, tracking and reporting and optional media and public advisory alerts.

Mission Ready Drone Toolkit

AiRXOS’ robust Partner Ecosystem provides Energy organizations with a “mission ready drone toolkit” for inspection, detection, and monitoring needs. This includes advanced drones, sensors, and professionally qualified pilots, in one turn-key service designed to carry out all forms of inspections.

Emergency Response and Disaster Recovery

Includes an integrated video distribution system certified on AT&T’s FirstNet – providing the industries only Unmanned Aircraft (UA) streaming solution proven and tested to operate during catastrophic events and recovery. This also provides the industry’s only digital SGI process, and mass alert distribution for rapid external communications to the public, UA operators, media and commercial organizations.

Compliance and Crew Management

Provides full accountability and transparency across teams. Designed to track and manage the status of each pilots’ license and expiration dates, flight hours and mission planning for a complete pilot workflow. Reporting tools track audit logs, UAS, crew, and operations management records, to satisfy regulatory compliance requirements and operational monitoring.

Asset Management and Security

Asset Management & Security optimizes the performance of assets to minimize costs, and reduce operational risks. Through AiRXOS’ partner GE Digital, the Enterprise Solution connects disparate data sources and uses advanced analytics to provide a unified view of an asset’s current state and health to mitigate downtime.

Analytics and Insights

AiRXOS’ Analytics and Insights partners help optimize operations and budget using advanced analytics on the data collected via UAS operation, providing actionable intelligence to better manage assets. With inspection insights integrated with Asset Performance Management systems of choice, energy organizations are provided a comprehensive picture of how assets are performing at any time.

Program Design

Before Energy UAS programs can fully operationalize, they may need help in designing the optimal solution for UAS operations and AiRXOS is prepared to assist with all their planning and operational needs.

Having come to life in 2018, AiRXOS offers UTM solutions; a traffic management ecosystem that provides a cooperative interaction between low altitude airspace users, such as commercial and hobbyist drone operators, and civil aviation authorities and air navigation service providers to determine and communicate real-time airspace status. UTM enables drone operations, crewed aircraft operations, and future Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) operations to coexist in the airspace.