Telefónica launches autonomous drone fleet management solution

Telefónica Ingeniería de Seguridad (TIS), the Telefónica Group company pioneer in integral technological security, has designed, together with its technological partner Unmanned Life, an innovative solution for managing autonomous drone fleets from a single centralised platform to carry out security, surveillance, event verification and critical infrastructure maintenance tasks.

This innovation will be presented during the Mobile World Congress (MWC), to be held in Barcelona between 28 February and 3 March. Specifically, it will star in the session that will take place in the Agora at the Telefónica stand on Tuesday 1 March, entitled “The future is here, Telefónica’s Headquarter Drone Protection”, and it will be possible to see how the solution works live.

This solution allows programming an autonomous flight zone in which several aircraft are able to identify events through analytics integrated into the platform with artificial intelligence, such as the detection of unauthorised persons at the site, and send the images in real time, thanks to 5G connectivity, for their corresponding analysis. All of this while complying with all aeronautical legal requirements for drone flight and privacy.

The solution has the capacity to integrate, on the one hand, the event verification function so that drones come to inspect the site in the event of any alarm and, on the other hand, the capacity to detect, identify and neutralise drones. In this way, the solution can detect aircraft at a distance of up to 10 kilometres and neutralise them when they are identified as a threat at a distance of approximately 1.5 kilometres.

Telefónica Ingeniería de Seguridad’s solution is designed especially for companies that lack specialised personnel in these surveillance and security functions or for those that want to assign their human teams to perform other tasks of greater added value in order to gain in competitiveness and be more agile in the analysis of the information collected and in decision-making. Its implementation also generates significant time and cost efficiencies of up to 35%, as drones do not require piloting.

The Unmmaned Life platform, which is hardware agnostic, can work with any type of drone. Telefónica Ingeniería de Seguridad carries out technological consultancy for the customisation of drones that best fit the needs of customers, taking into account sensorisation, autonomy, operation, environment, payloads and any parameter that may be involved in the operation.

To demonstrate the benefits and capabilities of the solution, a pilot test has been deployed at the headquarters of Distrito Telefónica in Madrid. In this demonstration of capabilities, carried out in a highly complex environment from the point of view of regulation due to its proximity to airports and heliports drones used have a size of 1.20 metres and have advanced security systems so that if any unforeseen event arises, such as loss of connectivity or inhibition of communications, they can land in a controlled manner. The drones also have an autonomy of 45 minutes and after this time the aircraft will automatically go to a nearby charging station to fully recharge in about 30 minutes.

This security solution is a pioneer at national level, being Distrito Telefónica the first corporate headquarters at national level to deploy it, obtaining all the relevant authorisations from the AESA (Spanish Aviation Safety Agency) to carry it out.

“We are very proud to continue helping companies to face the future with greater security and provide solutions for the protection of its assets, infrastructure and employees thanks to the capabilities of technology. With this solution we not only work with companies as a technology partner, but it also allows us to acquire a consulting role for everything related to the management of drone flights and compliance with regulatory requirements in areas as important as privacy,” says Fabián Blanco, Chairman and CEO of Telefónica Ingeniería de Seguridad.

“This is a great first step and a concrete result of our partnership with Telefónica. This innovative product is unique in its style, will set a benchmark in the market and will allow us to demonstrate that it is a secure technology that delivers concrete benefits to users. Together we are building an autonomous future that will improve security and inspections in an optimal, safe and environmentally sustainable way,” said Jorge Muñoz, vice President of Business and Marketing at Unmanned Life.

CT Bureau