*This is a machine-translated text of the original article.
KDDI Corporation, with the help of East Japan Railway Company (JR East) and Prodrone Co Ltd, conducted demonstration tests on February 4 and February 5 to improve the efficiency of railway facility inspections using smart drones within the railway maintenance base.
A smart drone is a drone that supports KDDI Corporation’s mobile communication network and can perform out-of-visual autonomous flight and remote supervisory control.
This demonstration showed that the drone can autonomously fly along designated routes using KDDI’s Smart Drone Platform, and that the camera and LED lights mounted on the drone can be used to photograph track facilities and transmit videos to remote personnel both day and night.
As a result, it was confirmed that the drone was moved back and forth in autonomous flight while maintaining an altitude of 20m on a 200m long track facility, and that the line equipment to be photographed was kept in the photographing frame.
In addition, it was confirmed that images captured by a drone’s camera (using LED lights at night) were transmitted to remote personnel using LTE communication network, and that the status of the line facilities to be inspected could be remotely grasped regardless of day or night.
In the future, the company plans to clarify inspection requirements so as to further test “drone-based inspection” and integrate into actual operations.
Original Text: https://ampmedia.jp/2020/04/23/kddi-17/