The Intelligent Drones for Port and Highways Technology project, InDePTH, forms part of the Future Flight Challenge Phase III programme delivered by Innovate UK on behalf of UKRI. The consortium consists of six partners: BT, Robok, HeroTech8, ABP, Kier and Connected Places Catapult. The group has brought together a range of new technologies and innovative solutions, experience in Collaborative Research and Development (CR&D) projects and domain knowledge to deliver against this national challenge.
Together, the project team will build and test the use of drones to carry out automatic ‘beyond visual line of sight’ (BVLOS) missions to monitor and control critical national infrastructure such as highways and ports. Specifically, the project will demonstrate value and commercial benefit in 3 use cases for ports and highways, including but not limited to asset management and infrastructure inspection.
In the next 12 months, the team will gather requirements and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the use cases and begin the design and prototyping of the technical solutions:
- Use Cases Definition and Requirements (September 2022)
- Testing and Demonstrations (March 2023-September 2023)
- Dissemination events (July 2023 and Summer 2024)
- Business case (March 2024)