The High Precision Package – also known as Komatsu’s Everyday Drone Solution – is a key component to Komatsu’s SMARTCONSTRUCTION program, which aims to improve workflow efficiency.
The Everyday Drone includes:
- A high precision unmanned aerial vehicle known as Explore1.
- An integrated Global Navigation Satellite System base station and edge compute module, known as Edge1.
- The Viewer, an online data visualisation and analysis tool.
The Everyday Drone provides users with industry-leading time to data without needing ground control points. This allows operators to integrate precision aerial data into their SMARTCONSTRUCTION workflow.
“We are now using the Everyday Drone at the start of projects to collect whole site information for pre-tender and bidding capability, comparing against 3D design surface to provide fleet and project managers with real, accurate information viewed in the SMARTCONSTRUCTION application,” Komatsu Australia’s SMARTCONSTRUCTION national technology solution expert manager Aaron Marsh said.
“This allows them to work out their cut and fill volumes with accuracy from the beginning,” Marsh continued, “and enables the project tender team to select the right machines for the project, optimising fleet recommendations and empowering the team to make the right, data-based decisions from the start.”
Testing phase
Skycatch founder and CEO Christian Sanz said his company was “proud to offer a better way of accessing precision data on-site. With traditional methods, the solutions are piecemeal, cumbersome, and time-consuming.
“Now, customers are able to make informed decisions about changes to what was planned and what is actually happening on site in near real time, ultimately providing greater productivity, increased profit and reducing project risk from beginning to end.”
Komatsu recently tested its drone solutions with various customers. It surveyed six quarries in five days for different customers. The data was post-processed in the cloud and sent to customers the next day.
“Compared to a traditional survey, this is 100 per cent more productive and efficient,” Komatsu Australia’s national remote support manager James Mackenzie said. “By using the Everyday Drone, customers are no longer putting themselves in harm’s way, surveying around heavy machinery or climbing up unstable stockpiles at risk of twisting an ankle.”
Marsh added Skycatch’s ability “to provide near real time data throughout the entire project is vital, and being able to deliver that to the customer and give project teams the ability to make decisions throughout the project easily with usable, accurate data is key to the success of the project as a whole, not just in siloed environments”.
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