Flyability has announced the launch of Elios 2, a new generation of confined space inspection UAVs.
"At the heart of Flyability products lies collision-tolerance. It is the true enabler to gathering data in the intricate and hostile places where our customers are searching for insights," said Patrick Thévoz, CEO of Flyability.
"To date, more than 550 Elios drones have been deployed at over 350 sites to inspect critical infrastructure for industries as diverse as power generation, mining, oil and gas, and chemical, even operating in radioactive areas of nuclear plants," Thévoz continued. “While Flyability’s expertise is in drone technologies, we are really in the business of keeping people safe and reducing asset downtime.”
Building upon years of customer feedback, the company has learned the importance of building tools that can be used by anyone, that provide unquestionable data quality, and that can replicate techniques used by seasoned inspectors in the field. “In developing Elios 2 we asked our users to challenge us. With their critical feedback, we went back to the drawing board to design, from the ground up, the ultimate indoor inspection drone they had dreamt about,” said Dr Adrien Briod, Co-founder & CTO of Flyability. "The result is an intuitive-to-fly drone fitted with an unobstructed 4K camera that can hover in place to spot sub-millimeter cracks. It performs reliably in GPS denied environment, in dark, dusty and troubled airflows, beyond line of sight, and particularly in places that no other drone can access."
Intelligent flight capabilities
Flyability has reinvented collision-tolerance transforming a formerly passive mechanical protection design into active intelligence built into the flight controller and motors of the Elios 2. Complemented by 7 vision stability sensors pointing in all directions to provide GPS-free stabilisation, Elios 2 makes airborne indoor inspection accessible to everyone.
"Here is a drone you can hand to somebody who's never used it and they'll be successful with it", said Ryan Turner, Geotechnical Engineer at the Barrick Golden Sunlight Mine.
With its 4K camera optimised for rendering images with a resolution of 0.18 mm/px at 30 cm,it provides the level of details professional inspectors would get by standing at an arm's length of objects of scrutiny. The Elios 2 also features the most powerful and intelligent lighting system ever built on a commercial drone. It produces 10K Lumen of light for increased situational awareness in large spaces. The Indirect, dustproof lighting configuration allows traversing dirty places without losing sight of the objective. Finally Elios 2 features an oblique lighting mode to reveal the texture of surfaces by creating shadows in all asperities. Coming together, these features turn the Elios 2 into an inspection tool fit to carry on regulated inspections.
