3D Robotics Partners With Autodesk, Sony to Deliver Solo Drone for Industrial Use

On Monday, drone manufacturer 3D Robotics announced a new partnership to bring a new version of the Solo to market focused on industrial use.

In conjunction with Autodesk and Sony, 3D Robotics will be outfitting the Solo with the ability to capture aerial images of an area or structure and uploading a map or 3D model to the cloud, while the drone is still airborne.

The Solo will be carrying the Sony UMC-R10C (in lieu of the more common GoPro camera) which will be fully integrated with the enterprise edition of the drone.

On the software side, the drone will ship with a Sony tablet preloaded with Autodesk’s Forge platform which consists of a suite of Autodesk cloud services, APIs, and SDKs for developers that quickly create the data, apps, experiences, and services necessary for making aerial data easily consumable and actionable.

Construction sites can be surveyed and recreated digitally, or power lines could be inspected and results shared with a massive team, all in near real time.

“The demand is just huge,” says Autodesk’s Dominique Pouliquen told The Verge,”There is not a single construction company we work with that does not have a UAV initiative.”

And Mr. Pouliquen speaks the truth. Stories and studies of drones being used on construction sites are becoming more and more common every day. Drones are not a novelty anymore –  they are a necessity.

So, while DJI continues to dominate the consumer market, there is a tremendous opportunity for turn-key solutions like 3DR’s new Solo edition to become the tool to have on a construction site.

You can see a quick preview of the system in action in the video below (we recommend turning your volume down a little).

 

“We are excited to collaborate with 3D Robotics to help field service professionals collect information and make insightful decisions across a variety of industries,” said Amar Hanspal, senior vice president at Products at Autodesk, in the official announcement. “From the integration of Site Scan and Autodesk cloud services, to their use of the Forge platform, 3D Robotics is opening up new ways of working for our architecture, engineering and construction customers.”