Drones Create a Surveillance Shake Up

Autonomous drones are taking flight inside.

When thinking of drones, most people will be familiar with one of the many outdoor applications for these flying robots. After all, use of drones for indoor surveillance is rare. But a new initiative called the DroneService project is about to change things: It's bringing these airborne objects inside, in a move that could radically change how companies approach security.

In the DroneService project, Avansig and Prosegur have developed an indoor surveillance system based on a programmable unmanned aircraft system.

The main innovation that DroneService introduces is the use of a MAV (Micro Aerial Vehicle / Micro Drone) with capabilities to perform surveillance rounds within a building in a completely autonomous mode. Each DroneService surveillance system has one or more MAVs and charging pads. The drone performs its assigned surveillance rounds and at the end of each round, it lands over a charging pad.

During the surveillance rounds, micro drones record video and transmit it in real time. If the MAV detects some unexpected situation, then it sends a security alert to the control center. The MAV also performs detection and obstacle avoidance.

A source says the DroneService project’s first customer is a big chain of shopping malls and, “the outcome of the first deployment is probably set to disrupt the surveillance market.”