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Oct 07, 2023

Transport Canada Approves Autonomous Drones For Beyond Visual Line Of Site Monitoring

A Percepto drone collects visual data for inspection & monitoring purposes at a

A Percepto drone collects visual data for inspection & monitoring purposes at a utility in the ... [+] Netherlands (2022). Transport Canada approved the first beyond the visual line of sight waiver for automated drones to inspect electric power plants 01/23.

For five days in December 2022, an extratropical cyclone created blizzards, high winds, snowfall, and record-freezing temperatures across parts of Canada and the United States. Utility companies struggled to keep heat and power online. The Tennessee Valley Authority reported in Vox that demand was running nearly 35 percent higher than a typical winter day during those five days in December 2022. In Canada, power outages affected 317,900 people in Quebec and Ontario.

Getting utility companies back online faster is something that Ariel Avitan, Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Percepto, says drones can do.

"Autonomous drones are key players in responding to emergencies when they do happen," said Avitan in an email interview. "If a fire erupts at a coal-fired power plant, for example, a drone can provide immediate situational awareness to response crews to safely direct them through the emergency event."

In January 2023, Transport Canada approved the first automated and autonomous drones, Percepto's Air Max drone, to monitor the Ontario Power Generation (OPG) electric power station to operate inspection drones beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). This is the first time regulators in Canada are allowing autonomous drone operations.

Neta Gliksman, VP of Policy and Government Affairs at Percepto, said in an email interview in the past, automated drones could only be used if a visual observer was outside watching drones in flight to ensure they would not be at risk of infringing on the airspace of other objects in the sky.

"To gain an exception to BVLOS, drone operators would need to apply for a waiver from the government airspace authority, proving the safe operation of drones without human intervention, said Gliksman. "What has been achieved at OPG is that a waiver has been granted for Percepto drones to fly without a visual observer present while enabling an offsite pilot overseeing drone flights (known as full BVLOS) to be located anywhere within Canada."

Gliksman says that with BVLOS approval, the OPG can monitor their facility from any remote location within Canada, which is critical for both day-to-day operations and emergency response. "The groundbreaking approval lays the groundwork for future approvals at multiple facilities, as the safety case for operating Percepto drones BVLOS operations without any personnel on-site has been made and approved by Transport Canada," said Gliksman.

"Automated drone inspections enable faster and more frequent inspection at power stations and electrical grids in addition to other critical infrastructure at oil and gas facilities, mines, solar farms, and other heavy industrial environments," said Gliksman. "Fully approved BVLOS flights improve operational efficiency in multiple ways - by enabling faster and more frequent inspections, as mentioned above, and enabling more people to become eligible infrastructure inspectors."

Gliksman noted other benefits to the waiver and regulation, including ongoing infrastructure monitoring without human intervention. "They safely inspect and monitor hard-to-access and often hazardous assets like transmission lines day in and day out, in almost any weather conditions," said Gliksman. "Previous inspection methods range from manually climbing towers and equipment to helicopter inspections - all posing direct risks to employees."

"Because they are AI-powered, autonomous drone platforms can also turn the data gathered in the field into immediately actionable insights on mission-critical maintenance issues," adds Gliksman.

Gliksman says the short-term vision for BVLOS operations, both in Canada and worldwide, calls on regulators to approve safe and reliable solutions to operate BVLOS nationwide.

"Percepto solutions were recently approved by the FAA to operate BVLOS throughout the US, a testament to the solution's field-proven reliability," said Gliksman. "Farther down the line, we expect regulators to develop a more permanent rule governing BVLOS operations that will allow operators to operate any drone system BVLOS out of the box."

"High-frequency autonomous inspections prevent serious power infrastructure disasters," said Avitan. "Companies can implement effective preventive maintenance strategies by detecting small faults early on before they turn into larger failures."

Avitan says an example of prevention is that a company can detect a broken jumper cable on an aging power line.

"By detecting this broken jumper cable early on, they can repair it and ensure the grid is in good working condition," said Avitan. "With legacy methods of manually inspecting a power grid once every six or seven years, the small failure of a broken jumper cable can turn into a wildfire, as is the case of the 2019 Kincade Fire responsible for the destruction of 77,000 acres, evacuation of 200,000 residents and serious injury of at least six response workers."

"These daily inspections are critical to ensuring employee safety because they minimize the need for personnel to climb towers and access high-altitude assets via forklift," said Avitan.

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This post has been updated since it was originally published to reflect the year (2023) Transport Canada approved autonomous drones to monitor OPG.