Autel, DroneSense Pilot an Integrated Drone Public-Safety Platform

Public-safety UAV software provider DroneSense is teaming up with drone manufacturer Autel Robotics to create a supercharged platform for public-safety operators using Autel’s EVO drone series.

The partnership will marry the Autel EVO II Dual with DroneSense’s out-of-the-box solution for police, fire and rescue agencies designed to build, manage and scale drone programs.

EVO II Dual drone tech helps public safety personnel recognize persons and objects in zero-light environments through smoke/fog and offers a picture-in-picture display with an 8K resolution RGB camera for greater accuracy. The EVO II also sports one of the highest resolution thermal imaging cameras in its class, providing police officers and firefighters crisp detail, 4X lossless zoom capability and up to 40 minutes flight time.

DroneSense allows operators to deliver critical, real-time intelligence to decision-makers. In addition, the platform provides drone pilots with an intuitive, consistent flight control interface across all the drones in their fleet.

Incident commanders gain complete situational awareness with live video streams and telemetry data from drones in the air as well as the ability to easily collaborate with pilots and neighboring agencies.

Additionally, DroneSense provides program administrators with a complete system of record to keep track of critical data like flight logs, hardware and personnel.

“Autel Enterprise Robotics is enthusiastic about our relationship with DroneSense. The industry’s two best-in-class toolsets coming together provides public safety with a powerful workflow, functionality our customers have been requesting for many months,” said Gary DeLuca, CEO of Autel USA.

“Having DroneSense support all aircraft in the EVO series, including our Made in USA Autel EVO II Dual, changes the situational awareness and management game for public safety agencies.”

“We saw an increased interest from our public safety customers in the Autel EVO Series, so our engineering team evaluated the platform and were impressed with its features and performance,” said Chris Eyhorn, CEO of DroneSense.

“With our new integration, we are able to offer an advanced hardware option that will facilitate more successful UAS missions for our public safety customers.”

The two companies have already garnered a lot of positive buzz from public-safety officials like John Kuch, a retired Fairfax County Police Department officer. “Autel has developed the EVO II Dual with Public Safety applications in mind, featuring a short 30-second deployment time, the highest optical resolution available in a non-military application, a secure data policy, and best-in-class flight times,” he said. “The DroneSense/Autel partnership provides public safety agencies the best tools available for managing unmanned aerial programs and coordinating flight operations.”

DroneSense will highlight Autel Enterprise Robotics in an upcoming webinar Thursday, Nov. 12 at 1 p.m. CST to demonstrate how Autel’s EVO Series works within the DroneSense Platform. Registration information can be found h ere.

In August, the Las Vegas Police Department and Sundance Media Group flew over a mock nighttime crime scene for evidence documentation using Pix4Dreact real-time mapping solution as a rollout to a new partnership. Earlier this year, DroneSense partnered with French UAV giant Parrot to integrate Parrot’s ANAFI drone model with DroneSense.

FAQs

What is DroneSense?

DroneSense is a software platform that equips public safety drone programs with the tools they need to conduct successful operations and manage their program. DroneSense provides drone pilots with an intuitive, consistent flight control interface across all the drones in their fleet. Incident commanders gain complete situational awareness with live video streams and telemetry data from drones in the air as well as the ability to easily collaborate with pilots and neighboring agencies. Additionally, DroneSense provides program administrators with a complete system of record to keep track of critical data like flight logs, hardware, and personnel.

What is the Autel and DroneSense Integration?

The DroneSense platform requires deep integration into any airframe/platform in order to successfully enable its core functions – flight control, live streaming and collaboration, and automated flight logging. Autel’s SDK enabled DroneSense to build deep integration, providing DroneSense users the opportunity to use the entire Autel EVO Series of aircraft, including the original Evo aircraft, as well as the EVO II Dual platform, a Made in USA aircraft.

Additionally, DroneSense enables users to view telemetry and video streams from multiple Autel aircraft simultaneously by using DroneSense Operations Hub. Multiple pilots with multiple aircraft may be directly observed, regardless of the operating theater. Incident commanders are able to make decisions based on either thermal or RGB data passed from the Autel EVO II Dual camera system. This also allows all responders to access video data for real-time situation awareness as they approach and arrive on the scene.

Which Autel EVO systems are compatible with DroneSense?

The complete line of Autel EVO and EVO II systems are now compatible with DroneSense- including the EVO, EVO II, EVO II Pro, and EVO II Dual – all American-manufactured products.

Can multiple agencies collaborate simultaneously in DroneSense?

If multiple agencies that each have their own DroneSense account need to collaborate on a scene, users can create what’s referred to as a “collaborative mission” by generating a mission code, which enables all participating agencies to view each other’s drones and video streams. Imagine a large event where police, fire, and emergency services are jointly operating, and each agency is fully aware of what areas have been searched, viewed, etc.

Which sensor payloads does DroneSense support?

DroneSense supports all visual thermal payloads available on the EVO series. The current version of DroneSense Mobile supports the thermal capabilities of the EVO II Dual with more advanced features coming soon. Once the next Autel SDK is available with those features, DroneSense will surface those additional thermal abilities to pilots.

What resolution video feeds are available in DroneSense?

DroneSense typically streams HD video at 720p as an ideal balance of video quality and efficient use of bandwidth. DroneSense’s proprietary adaptive bitrate algorithm optimizes the quality of the video streams for the available bandwidth in real-time to ensure that viewers can still consume live video, even in poor network environments.

What’s the latency when streaming video from Autel EVO through DroneSense?

DroneSense offers near real-time video streaming with an industry-leading glass-to-glass latency of less than half of a second.

How does DroneSense connect to the EVO systems?

DroneSense connects to the Autel EVO series aircraft through Autel’s SDK.

How does the system ensure data security?

The Autel EVO line of aircraft is designed for public safety’s most challenging environments and DroneSense offers a platform that allows agencies to securely fly, stream video, and manage the sensitive data these missions produce. DroneSense offers an extensive range of security features including industry-leading encryption and keeping U.S. customer data stored in-country. The DroneSense platform utilizes encryption such as TLS 1.2 and federally- certified AWS technologies to protect customer data where it is collected, stored, and viewed – and every stage in-between.