0*e1rDvoNlq7WFR8nx.jpg COVID-19 i.e. the coronavirus disease has been aptly called the Black Swan of 2020 — a global contagion that will disrupt public health and the global economy. With social distancing turning out to be insufficient, governments across the world are moving to comprehensive lockdowns, likely for weeks if not months, in order to ‘flatten the curve’ and get this pandemic under control.

Get started with FlytNow Pro for free, to help your employees, customers, partners and the general public tackle COVID-19 safely. Learn more at http://flytnow.com/COVID-19

In these trying times, each company is striving to do its part in helping their employees, partners and customers cope. FlytBase, for our part, is making FlytNow Pro available for free (until at-least May 31, 2020) for customers who seek to deploy drones as an aid to help control the virus.

Safety via Autonomy

The most powerful weapon in the battle against COVID-19 is avoiding human-to-human contact. Drones can thus serve us well — when used remotely and autonomously. Whether monitoring public spaces via live video feeds, delivering medicines to the last mile, or aiding public safety personnel during incident response, autonomous drones can help minimize human interactions while ensuring that food, medicines and help reach people on time.

Monitoring of Public Spaces

Across the world, national and local governments have rapidly started closing public spaces — train & bus terminals, schools, colleges, airports, parks, malls — and soon even commercial offices and retail shops. Unfortunately, there remains a need to monitor and enforce such shutdowns, since not all members of the public are diligently adhering to social distancing and self-quarantines.

Drones, equipped with payloads such as beacons, loudspeakers, and sirens, can thus serve as a public safety aid — sending live video feeds to COVID-19 control centers, warning people of the need to stay indoors, and perhaps even spraying disinfectants! Thermal cameras mounted on drones, and controlled remotely via FlytNow, can automatically identify crowds, which can then be quickly dispersed to minimize human-to-human transmission of the virus. Such low-latency video streams can be shared with stakeholders across geographies to help monitor the overall social situation and make informed decisions about shutdowns, crowd control and public safety.

Food & Medicine Delivery

With health workers directly exposed to the virus, drone service providers can use FlytNow to deliver medicines, first aid kits and other emergency supplies — to homes as well as hospitals. Via 4G connectivity, drones and their payloads can be remotely controlled — such missions can be planned and launched from cloud-based dashboards, accessible to multiple stakeholders. Live video streams in the FlytNow dashboard can help confirm medical deliveries, and the recipients can participate in flight planning and monitoring, in a remote yet secure manner.

At a time when supply chains are getting disrupted, remote and/or rural populations need to be proactively assisted with daily supplies. Drones are an ideal solution for this urgent need — via EVLOS and BVLOS operations that can be remotely planned, controlled and monitored using FlytNow. Even in urban areas, public health officials are strongly encouraging e-commerce and delivery of daily provisions, instead of people visiting supermarkets, restaurants and pharmacies.

Emergency Response

First responders, whether police, firefighters or health workers, now need to be themselves protected against the virus during incident response. Sending drones before people must become an integral part of such operations — powered by FlytNow capabilities such as fleet management, precision landing, autonomous charging, video recording, dual-camera feeds and airspace compliance.

With the pandemic expected to last a while, public safety officials will have to plan for emergency response (with minimal involvement of humans) during floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.

FlytBase, Inc. salutes and wishes well, all those involved in this mammoth exercise — our doctors, nurses, aid workers, public servants, first responders, and many other selfless and brave volunteers. We are keen to do our part by leveraging autonomous drone technology to mitigate the adverse effects of the novel coronavirus.

Get started with FlytNow Pro for free, to help your employees, customers, partners and the general public tackle COVID-19 safely. Learn more at http://flytnow.com/COVID-19

The need for security and surveillance — whether residential or commercial — continues to steadily increase in a world of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Privacy, not just security is becoming as much of a concern — with technology playing a central role on both fronts i.e. in violation of privacy and in the provision of security. This is where drones for security come in, powered by reliable hardware and intelligent software.

Traditional security systems (human guards, CCTV cameras, locks, access control systems, etc.) continue to prevail amongst security and surveillance providers. However, new technologies ranging from drones and robots to biometrics, AI and cyber-security have started to capture a larger share of the market. These technologies offer a range of benefits — automation, scalability, remote management, auditability, cost-effectiveness, reliability, mass customization and so on.

Use of Security Drones

Unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e. drones) are already part of the most advanced home and office security systems, with a fleet of drones programmed to launch from their nests, run repeated missions, capture aerial footage of the assets being secured, and return to their nests to charge and prepare for the next mission. By augmenting, if not replacing, human guards and static CCTVs, these ‘eyes in the sky’ can offer faster response to incidents, real-time situational awareness to the central command, live video feeds to remote stakeholders, and even serve as a deterrence to unfriendly elements.

Demand for Drones in Security & Surveillance applications

While regulation remains a challenge for outdoor operations such as aerial security and surveillance using drones, technology has advanced enough to enable drone-in-a-box security systems. These include not just drones, but also autonomous charging pads, weather-proof docking stations, intelligent automation via software, cloud connectivity and live remote operations. The key to large-scale adoption of such drone surveillance systems is their cost-effectiveness; which in turn requires the use of off-the-shelf drone hardware and SaaS-enabled solutions that minimize the upfront capital expenditure.

Importance of UAV for Residential & Commercial Security

Residential security drones have made the news in recent years, but it is industrial and commercial security systems that are seeing faster adoption. This is driven not only by enterprise initiatives in security automation but also by the rapidly increasing costs of human guards for drone security system providers, made worse by constant employee turnover.

By putting equipment, instead of humans, at risk of harm in case of adverse incidents, aerial surveillance drones minimize risk and enable better-informed decisions during security events. The best surveillance drones can, in fact, be rapidly sent to a location of interest, using GPS navigation and 4G/5G connectivity, to immediately stream live video feeds and even carry payloads such as sirens or warning lights. With thermal and IR cameras easily available, night-time drone patrols and alarms can be an integral part of aerial home/office surveillance systems.

Autonomous UAV Security & Surveillance Solution

Autonomy is — of course — the key to drones for security, since having human operators involved in UAV surveillance can not only add to the cost, but also introduce the risk of errors, or worse, loss of integrity of security operations. Software-driven automation of drones is thus driving their adoption for home security as well as industrial perimeter security. By defining specific points of interest, ideal schedules, and waypoint-wise camera action, such autonomous UAV security systems can be programmed to operate reliably and continuously and can be rapidly deployed across large swathes of residential or commercial areas. Automatic obstacle detection, collision avoidance and precision landing capabilities further expand the use-cases for drones in this context.

Making Drones Smarter for Security Solutions

By incorporating AI/ML techniques, image processing, and machine vision, drone security systems can even recognize things, track-and-follow intruders, and automatically identify objects that post threats. The physical size and weight of drones are reducing rapidly as the technology matures; such drones can make hard-to-reach locations easily accessible — and make harsh environments more secure — without putting humans at risk of harm.

Aerial video surveillance is thus turning out to be the next frontier for the security industry, powered by autonomous drone fleets that are intelligent, cloud-connected and remotely managed.

How can drones be easily, quickly adopted for security use-cases?

FlytBase offers a 28-day free trial for users to explore FlytNow Pro edition and its relevance to specific use-cases for security stakeholders. Customers can add their drone fleets, fly them autonomously, create flight plans & coordinate missions, set geo-fence and checklists, view and store live video footage and integrate drone operations into an existing system.

Start Now and fly your drone(s) via a free trial in 5 Easy Steps.

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4 Ways Drones Help Authorities & Businesses Fight COVID-19