Auterion and Phase One Enter Drone Inspection Partnership

Auterion, a company building an open and software-defined future for enterprise drone fleets, is teaming up with Phase One, the world-leading developer and manufacturer of medium and large format aerial photography systems. The companies will make the Phase One P3 Payload line-up easily accessible, with a plug-and-play integration to Auterion’s open drone ecosystem.

Enterprise inspections today are limited to periodic inspections of selected assets in a small geographic area. Enterprises are forced to use either internal drone operators or operators who are trained in the organization’s workflow to effectively collect pertinent data. Scaling the inspections from tens of assets to thousands of assets requires a platform-agnostic, end-to-end, streamlined workflow. This enables drone operators to conduct the inspections across a large region, lowering the cost and increasing the coverage.

Real-time inspection data

Valued for its high-quality image quality in high-precision and time-critical inspections, Phase One’s P3 Payload consists of a high-resolution 100MP iXM camera – exclusively designed for UAVs – containing a BSI sensor with the highest dynamic range of 83dB, a rangefinder with smart focus, and a broad array of lenses including 35mm, 80mm and 150mm. The partnership joins the P3 Payload’s inspection capabilities with the versatility native to Auterion’s ecosystem of software-defined and connected drones – enabling customers to integrate real-time inspection data into their existing applications and workflows. The P3 Payload is Phase One’s first payload compatible with the Auterion ecosystem.

“Phase One is dedicated to raising the bar for data quality across all drone applications and types,” said Michael Messerschmidt, portfolio director for inspection and drones at Phase One. “Through our partnership with Auterion, we can provide the critical infrastructure required for our customers to scale their high-value drone inspections. By working with leading drone ecosystems like this one and supporting our customers’ current and future business regardless of platform, Phase One aims to deliver unmatched, end-to-end productivity in shorter flight times.”

Faster geospatial mapping

Drones leveraging the Phase One P3 Payload and the power and connectivity of Auterion’s Skynode and Suite are capable of dramatically scaling high-value, high-risk and time-critical inspections including those of wind turbine fields (on land and offshore), oil refineries and offshore rigs, power masts and utility lines, bridges, dams, nuclear facilities, large infrastructure projects and other use cases. The combination also benefits faster geospatial mapping, bringing high image quality with very high resolution, dynamic range, colour fidelity and geometric accuracy to projects.

“The partnership between Auterion and Phase One makes it possible to scale drone inspection operations,” said Thomas Gubler, head of avionics at Auterion. “Customers will benefit from cloud connectivity, which shortens and simplifies workflow and enables faster corrective actions for any problem identified. There’s no more pulling from an SD card. A cloud-connected workflow becomes increasingly important when paired with the capabilities of Phase One’s high-precision, high-quality P3 Payload.”

Faster expansion and diversification of drone fleets

A growing open ecosystem for drones provides an increasing level of choice for customers. “More end users can leverage payloads for plug-and-play operation without extensive integration, which means enterprises can expand and diversify their fleets fast,” said Gubler. “Auterion’s easy, open standards software integration is yielding the most versatile and innovative range of drone solutions for scaled enterprise applications, like this uniquely powerful pairing with Phase One. The Auterion ecosystem future-proofs our offerings, de-risking investments in the eye of our customers.”

Auterion is bringing together an ecosystem of partners that work together on open standards to solve customer problems with solutions that are unattainable for proprietary providers. The company is choosing partners with the highest quality products to offer a complete set of components for state-of-the-art drones.