vHive’s case study: How drones are improving safety and data quality

A couple of years ago, vHive revolutionised sites inspection by introducing drones in the tower industry. Now, its software solution has proven its efficiency and the company has been able to help towercos to obtain accurate, high-quality data regarding their assets while reducing cost and minimising risk. TowerXchange sat down with vHive’s CEO Yariv Geller to discuss the company achievements and review the benefits that drone-based inspections bring to the telecom infrastructure industry.

TowerXchange: About a year ago, you shared with TowerXchange vHive’s profile and value proposition to the industry. Could you remind our readers what are the key challenges your software addresses?

We have been working with tower companies for the past couple of years and have seen that most of them have been coping with the same challenges. One of their main problems is their revenue loss, which depends on knowing exactly what equipment MNOs install on their towers. It is often very hard for them to keep track of certain modifications on each site. Inaccuracies happen frequently with discrepancies in the number of antennas installed, ancillary equipment that was added, dimensions and locations of equipment installed. And all that translates into revenue losses.

With the significant level of M&A activity in the market, many towers change hands with very sparse and inaccurate information attached to them. The buyer typically relies on inspecting a small percentage of the acquired towers as a sample set, since it is too costly and takes too long to survey each site. This usually translates to a later need to reconcile costs to the seller, to the buyer or to both.

Another challenge is the quality of the data of their assets. Tower companies must have a good understanding of their portfolios in order to be successful. To do so, they rely on their personnel to gather field information, and usually field test engineers are the ones who put together ground-based information as well as tower climbers who sample data from the sites.

Climbers typically use manual measurement tools and rely on their cell phone cameras. These images are then transferred to an engineer in the office who needs to properly file them, orient them and figure out their location in 3D space. This information is used either to inspect faults or to manually reconstruct the tower’s 3D structure from the assorted images – a time consuming and costly process that takes many hours at a significant cost.

At the end of the process, the company generates a limited collection of images that are stored in folders in an arbitrary order after a manual translation of the data to a 3D sketch. Any need for additional data requires dispatching another tower climb, which needs to be scheduled weeks in advance, as tower climbers are a limited resource. The total process cycle from requiring information to field insights takes more than three months on average.

Additionally, towercos have to deal with particular operational challenges. These enterprises require highly skilled professionals to climb on top of their sites and capture data in dangerous places. Challenging weather conditions and tower radiation are relevant risk factors, hence reducing fatalities and accidents during the process is a critical safety concern for all businesses in the industry.

Towercos in turn are frequently fined by OSHA for safety violations. In addition to risk, the cost of training, certification, equipment and high insurance fees of tower climbers is substantial and can reach almost US$10,000. The Wall Street Journal published death rates among cell tower climbers at 183.6 per 100,000, making it the most dangerous job in America at one point. A minimum of two trained climbers/rescuers working 12-hour shifts must be onsite while performing elevated tower work, further increasing costs.

TowerXchange: Now, you have already proven vHive effectiveness in the field. Could you share with us what are the main benefits that drones have delivered to your clients?

I would like to highlight and explain the main benefits that vHive have been providing to towercos over the last couple of years.

1. Improved revenue: drones give towercos the ability to better capture data on their towers, from many angles and through high-resolution images. With this precise data, they know exactly what equipment has been installed on their tower. Furthermore, this data is valuable to their MNO customers in two categories:

- Service assurance – the ability to verify proper antenna azimuth, tilt angles and clear line of site to other towers, which ensures that optimal service is achieved;

- Maintenance – the ability to determine equipment issues, corrosion and cabling problems.

2. Opex and time reduction:

- vHive’s scalable solution enables non-expert field personal to operate and control drones with an easy to use software

- The total time in the field acquiring all the data needed dropped from around four hours to 30-40 minutes;

- The ability to use low-cost, off-the-shelf drones with high, global availability without a substantial capex investment is another major operational benefit. 

3. Better field data and faster insights: our solution effectively manages large amounts of data –drones capture gigabytes and terabytes of high-resolution imagery that are integrally transferred to our customers. Towercos improve their productivity, which directly impacts their bottom line by reducing costs and more importantly, by getting a better understanding of their assets for improved billing and new revenue opportunities. With such precise and large amounts of data, towercos can offer their customers new services such as predictive maintenance as well as increase their revenue streams from new services.

4. Improved employee safety: flying autonomous drones to complete tasks eliminate the need to climb towers which, as previously mentioned, is a potentially hazardous operation.

TowerXchange: What is the ROI and other financial results that you have delivered and can entice future customers?

Towercos that have been using the vHive software solution reported the following results:

- Data accuracy: tower companies improved the accuracy of their data on installed equipment on their towers. Some reported 5% improvement and identified inaccuracies that were related to the inaccurate count of installed equipment, inaccurate equipment dimensions and ancillary equipment that was installed but not registered. Engineering and Quality teams received much more comprehensive data and reduced cost by 67%;

- Billing on actual assets increased towerco revenues by 1%;

- Costs: the use of autonomous drones enabled customers to lower field survey cost and time by 62%;

- Safety: Enterprise Employee Health and Safety (EH&S) and the Corporate Compliance departments were satisfied that drones could complete tasks without climbers. A drop in work-related fatalities is expected but will be measured over a longer period of time;

- Time: thanks to drones, towercos can perform inspections even in challenging conditions, which saves them time and once again, zeroes the risk of accidents.

TowerXchange: Understandably, the industry is initially reluctant to deploy new technologies and solutions due their operational complexities. How does the implementation process work for vHive?

Global towercos have decided to adopt vHive’s enterprise drone hive software solution due to its easy implementation process and minimal requirements. Seeing the drones in action is an “ah ha” moment for their management. Based on our experience, we see that the following steps are enabling smooth operations and ensuring implementation success:

1. Choose a project lead, usually selected from the network operations, to be responsible for the drone program, who also provides internal and external feedback;

2. Assign drone pilots: the project-lead is responsible for creating a work plan with pre-defined monthly drone-survey targets that are assigned to pilots;

3. Create an annual plan: define the number of drone pilots required to cover the full infrastructure on an annual or monthly basis;

4. Training: New personnel training consists of a week of general drone training, followed by an online test for flight certification. That week also includes half a day of training and practice on vHive’s system. Trained and certified personnel can start surveying towers in the field the following week;

5. Drone purchase: for each field engineer the company needs to buy a drone with three spare batteries;

6. vHive imports all the data related to the towerco portfolio which is then automatically translated into missions in the system, enabling field personnel to merely fine tune mission parameters if needed.