Dealing with Data: The Next Challenge for Drone Projects

The value of an enterprise drone program is in the data.   “Data is the new oil,” said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich at last year’s Xponential conference. But that’s only true if the data gets to your clients and provides them with the insights they need.  Managing data is critical to realizing ROI for your customers’ drone programs.

It’s so critical that major drone analyst Colin Snow named data management as one of the top challenges that the drone industry faces in 2018.  Experts estimate that even a small drone fleet might generate 150 terabytes of data per day . Over the course of a year -or even a week- that amount of data becomes formidable.

The drone industry, however, is innovating to meet the challenge.  We looked at leading platform Optelos to identify 3 ways that drone solutions providers are working to help operators manage the data they generate for their clients.

Cloud Storage

Cloud storage is now the standard.  The sheer quantity of data makes other methods impractical.  Uploading to the cloud with a good tool is actually safer and more secure than dealing with flash drives, and it has all of the advantages of flexible storage capacity and collaboration with your clients – saving you steps and giving value to your customers.

Artificial Intelligence

AI is the new driver of drone technology in all kinds of ways.  But when it comes to data, AI algorithms are sophisticated and mature enough to be reliably able to analyze footage and classify it in industries like inspections.  Your time – and your clients’ – is too valuable to waste going through thousands of images visually.  Tools like the Optelos Drone Work Advisor program use AI and machine learning to inspect and classify images for you, cutting the time you spend on that work by more than half.

Organize as You Go

With the huge volume of data commercial operators have to deal with, a system of file folders on Dropbox simply won’t cut it.  Even organized by client or project, each folder quickly becomes unwieldy: unwieldy becomes unusable in no time.  Optelos has provided an easy way to describe, tag and annotate footage – which makes that data searchable and indexed.  Easy to find, and easy to use as time progresses.

As enterprise drone programs expand, data quantities will grow quickly.  Putting the right tools in place from the beginning will help companies increase their ROI now – and avoid a painful conversion to a professional system later.