UAVIA ROBOTICS PLATFORM, the solution developed and commercialised by UAVIA, allows its industrial customers to handle collaborative operations based on autonomous drones, remotely. It was presented live and on a large scale – multiple simultaneous operations commanded from different sites – during the recent Viva Technology show in Paris, and had been successfully tested by TOTAL in mid-2017 during a crisis management exercise involving the refinery security team, the firemen in action at the location of the crisis, and the crisis management team of TOTAL headquarters in Paris.
UAVIA ROBOTICS PLATFORM allowed for immediate supervision of the crisis, including real-time streaming of the video captured by UAVIA Skyguard to the three teams engaged in the operation, with team members having access to the video from either the crisis rooms’ screens, their laptops, tablets or smartphones.
During the different phases of the operation, all the actors were able to take control of the drone to position it at an ideal location. They also could take control of the high-definition camera to zoom in, follow a specific area of interest (even while the drone was moving), or take photos, and share such precise information with TOTAL Group’s management chain to allow for quick decision-making during a critical event.
“This first collaborative use of a drone platform during a crisis management exercise proved its efficiency above expectations” said Eric PAILLIER, Head of Crisis Management at TOTAL. “All the teams involved – operations, security, decision makers, the intervention team – whatever their location, got a precise sense of the situation within a few seconds and could then judge the impact of the corrective actions taken, allowing great reactivity”.
TOTAL and UAVIA have been constantly collaborating since then, in preparation for the permanent deployment of UAVIA ROBOTICS PLATFORM, with the goal of validating the performance, reliability, and efficiency delivered by the secured areal robotics support provided by the UAVIA Platform across various usages.
“Our relationship with TOTAL group began following the Grands Prix de l’Innovation de la Ville de Paris, which UAVIA won in December 2016” mentioned Pierre VILPOUX, Chief Business Officer at UAVIA. “Our teams were in contact with TOTAL’s Open Innovation Team at this event, and we were able to start exchanging with the crisis management team immediately, and then defined together with different TOTAL departments the pragmatic way forward to address all the barriers that can arise during the deployment of a robotics platform on an industrial site”.
“The fact that UAVIA ROBOTICS PLATFORM is open to heterogeneous fleets of robots and drones, even those provided by third parties, and the focus UAVIA has put on cybersecurity fits with our requirements. This collaboration opens significant perspectives, all of them in the context of making our operations safer and more efficient” concludes Julien DA VELA, Robotics and Drone Officer at TOTAL.