I N N O V A T E
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P H O E N I X
INDUSTRIAL AEROBOTICS John Wolcott: Owner
Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
—Mike Tyson
Introduction
Innovation Story
Industrial Aerobotics, located in Glendale Arizona, has been on the forefront of the rapidly evolving commercial drone industry specializing in mapping and inspections for the Construction and Energy verticals. We specifically specialize in fully autonomous data capture and its postproduction into highly accurate and actionable, maps, models, and inspection reports. Data captures occur with the highest resolution Optical, Infrared and Laser sensors available; mounted to the most advanced Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Drones) that navigate solely by computers and Global Positioning Systems (GPS).
Industrial Aerobotics was formed in 2007 under the original name of Aerial Photostore. In its original state the company utilized single and multi-engine manned aircraft to capture high resolution photographs for use in construction planning and commercial marketing. Although aerial imaging was possible using this method, it had many drawbacks and hurdles keeping the end product from being ideal. In addition to the obvious cost component of manned aircraft operations, the speed and altitude restrictions for such operations left much to be desired even with the most advanced imaging sensors onboard. Finally the extreme risk of manned flight and the safety implications of errors brought a welcome to the development of civil Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) hardware and the regulations necessary to allow their use in the National Airspace System (NAS). Although many see this market opportunity as innovative, to us it was the obvious next step and opened the door for the company to pivot, change names to Industrial Aerobotics, and find methods through innovation to migrate our current operations into what it is today. With this innovation came many rewards not only for our company, but for our clients. The innovative use of UAS addressed every negative aspect of our previous operating model and improved our data deliverables tenfold. Humans were removed from the air which drastically decreased our flight operations risk potential. The ability to fly significantly lower, and slower allowed data to be captured at unheard of resolutions and quality. All of these improvements allowed for a much better end product for our clients and in the true definition of innovation it was all done at a lower cost with increased safety. Even though the UAS technology and regulations allowed us to improve how aerial data is collected, its use in and of itself was not innovative enough to allow for improved operations from our traditional practices. This new technology needed many custom, internally developed innovations to create a complete
Website: www.industrialaerobotics.com
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