Achieving Patents for Drone Technology

Many new innovations start with a problem. You see, telecommunication tower companies need to understand the state of their towers such as the number and types of antennas, the presence of structural modifications and the general health of the structure.

Sometimes plans and drawings are not available, are out of date or need to be validated. So, in the past, the telecommunication company would send a crew to site to survey the tower – which is time consuming, dangerous and perhaps not accurate.

To solve this problem, our Client, Aerologix, has developed a tower modelling method using photographic data from drones to create three-dimensional point cloud models of towers that may then be used as a basis for engineering CAD models (computer aided drafting).

Aerologix have featured in the Australian Financial Review, Channel 10 and received Government Awards

The method, amongst other features, includes flying inner and outer orbits about the tower structure to capture overlapping photographic images that are combined using photogrammetry techniques to provide the point cloud data.

Having achieved exceptional results in testing, Aerologix approached Caska IP to prepare and file a patent application that has now resulted in:

• Certified Innovation Patent no. 2020104135 entitled “Method and System for Collection of Photographic Data”; and
• Granted Standard Patent no. 2017203165 also entitled “Method and System for Collection of Photographic Data”.

The patented methods form part of Aerologix’s AEROPATH technology for automating the flight paths of drones to capture images and data from towers and other structures, and can be access via Aerologix’s broader drone App which allows a customer to, for example, order a drone to image a structure and then one of Aerologix’s drone pilots proceeds to carry out the job and returns the captured images and associated data to the customer.

Aerologix have featured in the Australian Financial Review, Channel 10 and received Government Awards. We are really proud to support such outstanding Australian innovation – and the future certainly looks – sky high – for Aerologix.