Seven Drone riders from all over the country tested their skills to maneuver drones in difficult conditions to collect data, provide clear photos of the specified goals, and summarize what they found during a competition held in a real life construction site simulated north of Chicago.
The competition was sponsored by the Oracle technology company, which organized the event – attracting about 40 construction industry attendees – in the Oracle Industry Laboratory in Deerfield, Ill., A facility that brings together the company’s clients and technological partners to incubate and demonstrate new solutions to the challenges of the construction industry.
The Drone competition, which is in the third year, “helps us understand how the data is collected in the field,” said Burcin Kaplanoglu, vice president and head of Lab Industry Lab.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWCDTMKDRB8
The two -day competition was held inside and outside the glass wall laboratory, which has two stories of height and presents a visualization area where the attendees saw the riders trying their skills.
Using different drones brands, competitors had five minutes to complete the outdoors and three minutes to finish the inside.
Simulating what they do in real life, the riders had the challenge of collecting photographs and data on various articles in the field, including corrosion in a steel beam, numbers of a printed code in a gas meter behind two trees, counting the number of snails and pointing to how many lacked at the base of a pillar and finding several security perceives, including a cord, including a cord. nullify the wheel and a worker asleep at work.
The winner of the competition was Alex Powers, who operates Drones for Decatur, Archer Daniels Midland, based on Ill, who uses devices to detect maintenance problems in their buildings.
“I am honored to win, especially when there were so many talented pilots,” he said.
The most challenging part of the Powers Contest was to detect the codes of the gas meter. Browse the drone in conditions less than ideal was also a demanding task for Bryan Prignano, responsible for the project in technical services for pepper construction, who said “it was difficult to deepen things.”
The pilots were judged on whether they found the articles that were specified, the clarity of the photos they took and the thorough and the correct thing that were their summaries of what they had observed.
“We looked at the quality of what they collected and how they analyzed it,” said Kaplanoglu.
The competition allows your company to know the needs of the construction industry. Oracle wants to know the riders and attendees “what are the problems we want us to solve,” he says.
Kaplanoglu said that Oracle shares the views he gets from the contest in a complementary white book of 22 pages that is updated annually.
Looking to the future, Kaplanoglu hopes that more automation will be incorporated into Drone technology.
“Then you could schedule a drone to fly at a given time or capture data at a given time, and you don’t have to send an on -site pilot or someone.”