On-The-Fly Lego’s: Drones with 3D printing capability

3

October

2022

5/5 (1)

My drones brings all the prints to the yard

Recently a team of researchers has proven that a team of autonomous drones can work independently to print ánd build (!) (BBC, 2022). Materials needed for the construction or reparation of buildings. These drones, called the Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial-AM), are fully autonomous and use a blueprint as the basis of their 3D printing process. This foundation lets the drones know exactly what to print, where to go, and how to place the printed materials. They would then essentially operate just like bees where each individual drone has a specific purpose and role within the project, but unlike bees the drones are flexible and could change tasks on the fly. The drones have been tested in the laboratory under controlled conditions, where they could manufacture accurately within “five millimeters”. The printing was done using mixes of four types of cement. The researchers explain that further research is needed in collaboration with construction companies and practical use cases to test the drones capabilities in more realistic settings.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!

I think the advent of drones capable of 3D printing construction materials can be of tremendous benefit. Drones would be able to reach hard to reach places which could be dangerous as well, not just because of the place’s location, but also weather conditions, for example. A drone is not at risk of slipping and falling of a 500 meters building. Less human labor is needed which will reduce bodily harm from physical labor, costs will probably decrease and revenues probably increase because projects have less downtime while also greater efficiency because drones know exactly what to do based on the blueprints. However, human expertise is still crucial, because they need to give inputs to the drone and make sure the drones do an actual good job.

Source

BBC. (2022, September). Flying 3D printer drones work like bees to fix buildings. Retrieved from bbc: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-62993125

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Smart Farming: How the Internet of Things transform the Agriculture Industry.

26

September

2020

5/5 (2) With the rising population growth, which is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, there is increasingly more pressure on the agriculture industry in order to meet this rising demand (UN, 2019). In addition, environmental challenges, such as unfavorable weather conditions and climate change, only complicate this further. To meet this demand, the agriculture industry is moving towards the use of the Internet of Things (IoT). Agriculture applications of IoT allow the industry to increase operational efficiency, decrease costs, reduce waste as well as improve the quality of their yield (Ravindra, 2020).

With smart farming, real-time data of farming procedures is gathered, processed, and analyzed, to allow large farm owners to be able to make more informed decisions (Kamilaris et al., 2016). With the use of IoT, players in the agriculture industry can monitor their equipment, crops, and livestock. Moreover, the data obtained from sensors placed in the field, allows them to run statistical predictions for their crops and livestock (Meola, 2020). A few IoT-enabled applications in smart farming, such as Precision Farming, Livestock Farming, and Smart Greenhouses will be discussed below.

Precision Farming

Precision farming is an umbrella notion for IoT-based techniques to make farming more controlled and accurate. Such IoT-based techniques make use of items, such as sensors, control systems, robotics, autonomous vehicles, automated hardware, and so on (Sciforce, 2019). Large farm owners can use crop management devices which should be placed in the field to collect data specific for crops. These devices gather information ranging from temperatures to leaf water potential, to overall crop health. By having this visibility at the crop-level, large farm owners are able to effectively prevent any diseases that can harm their yield. Thus, precision farming allows large farm owners to make decisions per square meter or per plant, as opposed to traditional farming where decisions are made at field-level (Sciforce, 2019). Furthermore, with precision farming, large farm owners reduce their environmental footprint as it allows for more efficient irrigation and more precise use of fertilizers and pesticides for crops (Kamilaris et al., 2016).

Livestock Farming

With the use of wireless IoT applications, large farm owners can collect data and monitor the location, well-being, and health of their livestock. With the information collected from the sensors attached to the animals, large farm owners can identify sick cattle. These sick cattle can be separated from the herd, thereby preventing the spread of the disease (Sciforce, 2019). This would save farm owners significant medical costs which they would have occurred had the disease spread to the rest of the herd. Additionally, it reduces labor costs as ranchers can locate their cattle more easily with the help of IoT-based sensors (Ravindra, 2020).

Smart Greenhouses   

Greenhouse farming is a practice of growing crops, vegetables, fruits, etc. in a controlled environment to provide favorable growing conditions and protect the crops, vegetables, fruits, etc. from unfavorable weather and various pests (Hajdu, 2020). Smart greenhouses are designed with the use of IoT so that it intelligently monitors and controls the climate, based on the requirements of the growing crops. Specifically, the IoT sensors in the greenhouse provide information on the light levels, air pressure, humidity, and temperature. These sensors can control the machines to open a window, turn on lights, control a heater, and so on. In addition, with the creation of a cloud server, farm owners can remotely access the system and control the temperatures within the greenhouse. This eliminates the costs of constant manual monitoring as well as optimizing the growth conditions of the crops (Ravindra, 2020).

Smart farming and IoT-driven agriculture have laid the foundations for the Green revolution. The Green revolution is expected to transform the agriculture industry by relying on combinations of new technologies such as IoT, sensors, geo-positioning systems, Big Data, agricultural drones, robotics, and so on. Pesticides and fertilizer use are expected to be minimized while overall efficiency will be maximized. Also, IoT enables better traceability of food, which in turn will lead to increased food safety. Moreover, these technologies help the environment through, for example, more efficient use of water (Sciforce, 2019). Therefore, smart farming is expected to transform the agriculture environment and deliver a more productive and sustainable agricultural production so that by 2050, all 9.6 billion people can be fed in a sustainable way.

 

Bibliography

Hadju, I., 2020. Greenhouse Farming Exceeds Weather Limitations. [online] Agrivi Blog. Available at: <https://blog.agrivi.com/post/greenhouse-farming-exceeds-weather-limitations> [Accessed 26 September 2020].

Kamilaris, A., Gao, F., Prenafeta-Boldu, X. and Ali, M.I. Agri-IoT: A semantic framework for Internet of Things-enabled smart farming applications. [online] 2016 IEEE 3rd World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT). Available at: doi: <10.1109/WF-IoT.2016.7845467> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

Meola, A., 2020. Smart Farming In 2020: How Iot Sensors Are Creating A More Efficient Precision Agriculture Industry. [online] Business Insider. Available at: <https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-farming-iot-agriculture?international=true&r=US&IR=T> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

Ravindra, S., 2020. Iot Applications In Agriculture. [online] IoT For All. Available at: <https://www.iotforall.com/iot-applications-in-agriculture> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

Sciforce. 2019. Smart Farming, Or The Future Of Agriculture. [online] Available at: <https://medium.com/sciforce/smart-farming-or-the-future-of-agriculture-359f0089df69> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

United Nations. 2020. Growing At A Slower Pace, World Population Is Expected To Reach 9.7 Billion In 2050 And Could Peak At Nearly 11 Billion Around 2100 | UN DESA | United Nations Department Of Economic And Social Affairs. [online] Available at: <https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2019.html> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

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Technology of the Week – How IOT disrupts Agriculture

22

September

2017

No ratings yet. Hi there!

Having a nice day? Did you have some nice meals? You probably have, as we students love to eat! However, did you know that we need to produce 70% more food by 2050 than we had to produce in 2006. Seems impossible!

Luckily, we’re living in a time of technological advancements. Internet of Things is about sensors in all things that surrounds us. These sensors transmit data back to a common IOT platform and this platform uses common language and advanced analytics to provide you, or your products with valuable information (IBM Think Academy, 2015). What does this have to do with food? Well, you’re about to find out.

IOT is disrupting the agriculture industry, this sounds like a bad thing, but it’s actually very good for us, as hungry students. IOT is making the industry a lot more efficient and has created a whole new industry segment: precision farming!

Precision farming is about managing variations in the field accurately to grow more food using fewer resources and reducing production costs whilst respecting the environment. And this is done by applying Internet of Things.

We used the theory of newly-vulnerable markets to assess the market disruption and found that all three conditions apply: the industry is newly easy to enter because of lower technology costs, it’s attractive to attack as there is a lot of money to make as we need more food in the future, and it’s hard to defend as incumbents are very old-fashion and don’t look further than current strategies.

One interesting example of the use of Internet of Things in agriculture is drones. A drone is an unmanned aircraft or machine, that is also known as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or automated robot (IoT Agenda, 2017). The cost of production for drones continues to fall drastically, which means that the adoption of drone usage by people and companies is rapidly increasing.

There are many ways drones can increase efficiency in agriculture. They can perform a soil and field analysis. when the field is analyzed, the drones can also do the planting instead of the farmer, which is way faster (MIT Technology Review, 2016). Furthermore, drones can monitor the crop and do a health assessment to increase the efficiency.

By drones taking over these task, the farmer is enabled to make optimal use of resources, increase the profitability and sustainability of production, and reduce environmental impact.

But what will the future of agriculture look like? As you’ve seen, after the implementations of the drone, the farmer is now still actively involved in the whole farming process. We predict that, in the future, drones will operate autonomously. Currently, drones can take-off and land, determine flying patterns and determine flying height autonomously. In the future we predict that drones will become an “unsupervised learning system”. The profession of farming, as we know it now, could possibly disappear. A farmer will need to become more like a system manager than an agriculture know-it-all.  

 

Group 14

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Drone: Ally or Enemy?

24

October

2016

4.67/5 (3) Nowadays, technology has transformed many industries making them to move away from the classic brick and mortar business to online services. In this way firms could reduce operating costs while offering a larger variation of products. Nonetheless, shipping and postage has remained unchanged through these years with UPS and FedEx being the primary sources for shipping. But recently Amazon challenged the way of shipping with Amazon Prime Air. It is a drone delivery system distributing commercial packages in less than 30 minutes. Drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) originated mostly in military applications but the last 2 years civilian drones outnumbered military drones.

Drones are not only invading in the way of transporting goods, but in a few years, they will change the way of doing business in certain industries. The greatest contribution will be made in doctor aid and medical supplies delivery. Zipline, a Silicon Valley company, is working on a project with the government of Rwandan to deliver medical supplies to inaccessible villages, just in a few minutes. Doctors will request through an application specific material and it will be transferred from a medical warehouse facility right to the remote regions. The drones are designed to fly in average 120km and carry up to 1.5kg packages of fragile items which are dropped safely using a parachute. Also, the drones could be in the disposal of fire departments. In France, a company developed a real-time system to monitor fires and the spreads of flames. It will be “an eye in the sky” helping the firemen to take information about the fire and scout the direction of the flames, from a safe zone.

However, we should keep a close eye to the use of drones as they can also create some problems to the world. Just like birds, flying drones caring cargo could be a danger for aircrafts and should be assessed. The UK government is already running a project to test potential collision impacts between a drone and a commercial airplane as there have been several reports of “near misses”. The tests will be conducted by a military contractor with the use of military airplanes. Moreover, experts warn that drones can become “a game changer in the wrong hands”. Foreign embassies, nuclear power stations or a prime minister’s car can become potential targets for a terrorist attack.  Although, remote control warfare is impossible to control, mitigating measures like radio-frequency jammers or no-fly zones could prevent any detrimental action.

From transportation to journalism and from saving lives to guarding, drones will become an incentive for many industries in the way of making business. With pioneers Amazon and Royal Mail, more and more companies will enhance the use of drones to save time, money and limit gas emissions. Yet, possible dangers could arise using drones and the need for flying regulations is mandatory.

 

References:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/18/13314916/drone-crash-airplane-test-uk-dangers

http://www.ibtimes.com/14-ways-drones-will-change-world-1517486

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/27/how-rwanda-is-using-drones-to-save-millions-of-lives.html

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/11/drones-terrorist-attacks-security-thinktank

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35280402

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Business in the skies – how drones can revolutionize the way of doing business

5

October

2016

5/5 (4)

The introduction and popularization of drones has brought new opportunities for companies in a vast number of industries. It is possible that we are witnessing a disruption similar to the one caused by information technology and telecommunications that altered business models of companies and reshaped whole industries.

Drones, or officially, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are the aerial vehicles that are capable of flying without a human pilot on the board, autonomously or under the remote control. UAVs have been used in military service for some time already and are becoming increasingly popular in the business operations. Drones are currently being tested by Amazon (Amazon PrimeAir) or DHL (Parcelocopter) in companies’ logistic operations.

According to the report Clarity from above published by the PwC in May 2016 the addressable market value of drone powered solutions is estimated at over $127 bn. This is the value of labour and business services that may potentially be replaced by the broad applications of UAVs for business in the nearest future. The affected industries are diverse and range from agriculture to filmmaking. By implementation of the drone technology into their current processes, companies will be able to create new businesses and operating models.

Drones, thanks to the diverse individual characteristics of industries, will be used in many different ways and for various purposes. For example, the transport industry can use UAVs for e-commerce package delivery, fleet management, spare parts delivery or same-day food delivery. The most relevant features of drones for this industry are their speed, accessibility and low operating costs compared with the means of transport that require human labour. The next example is the infrastructure management. Railway, energy and oil and gas companies can use drones effectively for investment monitoring, maintenance and inventory management. Drones may prove to be valuable tools as they are capable of acquiring various data precisely and cost-effectively. What is more, UAVs can replace humans in some hazardous activities, and therefore reduce the number of accidents and increase the overall work safety.

However, there are also factors that may block or make the implementation of drone powered solutions more troublesome and thus slow down the adoption of drones in the business. The first potential barrier are legal regulations. Business entities need clear and transparent rules on how and where drones can be used and how to ensure the safety of drone operations. Another barrier for popularization of drones in business are privacy issues linked to these devices. Data collected by drones may contain private or sensitive information. Clear rules on which information can be collected and stored and how the privacy rights can be defended should be introduced. The last obstacle for popularization of commercial usage of drones is safety. Drone operations have to be supervised and a complex air-traffic management system should be developed in order to eliminate the risk of collisions with other aerial vehicles. Additionally, an auto-fail function, that would prevent the drone from uncontrolled fall to the ground should be included in every UAV.

Drones may bring plentiful of opportunities and benefits to many industries and revolutionize the companies’ operations forever. However, there are also aspects that may make the adoption of drones in the business difficult or impossible. What is your opinion on the future of commercial usage of drones?

 

Sources:

  1. https://www.amazon.com/b?node=8037720011
  2. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Unmanned+Aerial+Vehicle
  3. http://www.pcworld.com/article/3082649/tech-events-dupe/dhls-parcelcopter-is-automated-drone-delivery-in-action.html
  4. http://www.pwc.pl/en/publikacje/2016/clarity-from-above.html

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