Port Drones

Overview

Port Drone Fleet is a managed quadcopter operation for container terminals and harbour authorities — autonomous yard scanning, perimeter patrol, ship-shore inspection, and emergency response, all dispatched from a single console with full BVLOS regulatory paperwork handled.

Built for ports that want to replace 80% of routine yard walks and fence patrols, get a top-down ground-truth of every container's position daily, and respond to alarms (fire, smoke, intruder, oil-spill) within minutes rather than the time it takes a vehicle to drive there.

• Autonomous yard scans — reads container IDs top-down, reconciles to TOS
• Perimeter patrol — AI intruder / climbing / loitering detection on a fixed loop
• Ship-shore inspection — hull, lashing, hatch-cover, deck-cargo visual checks
• Drone-in-a-box — auto-charge, auto-launch, no on-site pilot needed for routine missions

How It Works

1. Drone over yard — a quadcopter flies a programmed serpentine pattern at ~45 m altitude with a 4K downward camera. The camera cone projects across a yard block, capturing every container top in one pass.
2. Mission + vision engine — waypoint mission planner manages the flight; an on-board / edge CNN detects and OCRs ISO 6346 container IDs, perimeter intruders, smoke / fire, and ship hull defects.
3. Dispatch cloud — aggregates missions across the fleet, tracks battery and weather windows, surfaces TOS yard-position mismatches and security alerts to operators.
4. Security ops — pilots monitor a live feed with HUD overlays, can trigger RTH or LAND, and route alarms (intruder, mismatch, hull defect) to the right on-duty officer with one-tap GO.

The purple feedback loop sends RTH commands, mission re-tasks and geofence updates back to every drone in the fleet.

Features

• Autonomous yard inventory — reads 80-100% of stacks daily, reconciles to TOS
• Drone-in-a-box (DiaB) — weatherproof landing pad with auto-charge and battery-swap
• BVLOS-ready — we handle SORA / CAAB / FAA Part 107 waiver applications
• Multi-drone orchestration — airspace deconfliction across 4-12 drones simultaneously
• AI detector library — container ID, intruder, smoke / fire, hull defect, oil-spill, PPE
• Live HUD — first-person view with telemetry overlay for pilots and security ops
• Weather-aware — auto-cancel on wind / rain / lightning thresholds
• Open APIs — native TOS, VMS (security CCTV), SOC, customs integrations

Use Cases

• Container yard inventory — daily top-down ID reconciliation against TOS
• Perimeter security patrol — replace foot / vehicle patrols on long fence lines
• Ship hull & lashing inspection — pre-departure visual checks of deck cargo
• Emergency response — first eyes on fire, smoke, oil-spill or collision incidents
• Crane / quay inspection — routine top-of-crane and high-mast visual surveys
• Environmental monitoring — oil-sheen, particulate, noise on a regular grid

Specifications

• Airframe: Industrial quadcopter, ~3 kg MTOW, 30-40 min flight time
• Cameras: 4K downward + 30x zoom oblique, optional thermal (640 px)
• Comms: 5 GHz proprietary + LTE failover, encrypted control link
• Wind tolerance: Operates to 12 m/s gust, hover-hold to 15 m/s
• Drone-in-a-box: IP55 pad, auto-charge / cool / heat, 5G back-haul
• Fleet size: 1-12 drones per port, multi-DiaB orchestration
• Regulations: SORA-ready, CAAB / FAA / EASA documentation included
• Security: AES-256 link, geofence enforcement, hardware kill-switch