Unleash Live has teamed up with Optus, Amazon Web Services and...

Unleash Live has teamed up with Optus, Amazon Web Services and electricity provider Endeavour Energy in a technology trial it is hoped will convince aviation authorities to relax laws limiting the ways drones can be used to monitor critical infrastructure.The Sydney-based start-up, which recently scored an $8 million investment from SafetyCulture, will use its AI-based video-recognition platform to identify damage to Endeavour Energy’s power lines in real time, using machine learning (ML) to analyse high-resolution videos shot by drones flying above and around the powerlines.

Scott Ryan, chief assets & operating officer at Endeavour Energy, said Unleash Live’s ML system will be used to identify problems such as cracked insulators, loose tie wires or missing parts on the power poles: problems that could lead to outages or even bushfires if they are not found and fixed quickly.Ultra High-Definition videos shot by the drones will be live-streamed over Optus’ 5G network, back to Unleash Live’s ML system, which is hosted on Amazon Web Services.The year-long trial is backed by a $648,000 grant from the federal government, as part of the government’s “5G Innovation Initiative” that is designed to generate demand for 5G networks in industry sectors including agriculture, mining, construction and manufacturing.

But there’s a snag.Despite the government backing of the trial, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) does not permit drones to be flown beyond the line of sight of a qualified drone pilot, and so Endeavour Energy’s electricity distribution network, spanning some 47,000 kilometres of power lines to the south and the west of Sydney, cannot simply be patrolled and analysed automatically, by drones controlled by Unleash Live’s AI.Humans have to watch the drones, too, with hand-held radio controllers that can take over control when there is a problem.That slows the inspection process down by roughly a factor of 10, Unleash Live co-founder and CEO Hanno Blankenstein told The Australian Financial Review.“The point of the next 12 months is to prove out (the system) with a pilot on the ground for safety reasons, and then go back to CASA and say ‘we’ve proven that this is safe and secure, let us go beyond line-of-sight’,” he said.The ideal scenario, Mr Blankenstein said, would be to have charging stations on top of power poles, so drones could fly from pole to pole, recharge themselves every 10km or so, and then continue on, all controlled by AI and all without human intervention.The authority had already indicated it was open to applications which go beyond the line of sight of a pilot, if they could be proven to be safe, and Mr Blankenstein said he was optimistic the regulations will be changed.Mr Ryan at Endeavour Energy said he was hoping the drones would be given a longer range by CASA, too, because timely inspection of the electricity infrastructure was only getting more important, and “drones can help a lot”.“We’re seeing a lot more threat to our network than we’ve ever seen before, with bushfires, with storms, with floods. They’re getting more severe, they’re getting more frequent.“But at the same time our customers are getting more and more dependent on electricity.“So this trial is around climate change, and having a resilient network. It’s a nice step in the right direction. It helps to give use cases which then might lead to a relaxation in regulation.”