Page 35 - AAA SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2018 Online Magazine

Until now, we have mostly concen- What is the level of interest region. There is also a sharp rise in
trated on integrating narrowbody that the company has seen Asian low-cost carriers, with strong
aircraft since they represent the for the product? incentives to reduce downtime and
bulk of the world aircraft fleet. Our maintenance costs, which is precisely
current product offering is focused Consistently high, particularly over what we offer.
on Airbus/Boeing narrowbodies but the last 6 months. Some players
we are progressively adding capa- are already well into adopting new Do you think there will come
bility for new aircraft types. We have technologies and are known as early a time when inspection
conducted tests on both Airbus and adopters. The majority of airlines and drones will replace human
Boeing widebodies over the last 2 MROs contacting us now have heard inspectors?
years, but we still have some work to of the technology as being used by
reach the same level of maturity as some of those industry leaders, and No, we believe drones or other
on narrowbodies. also want to board the train. Most automated inspection equipment
of these realize that they must inno- are decision-aiding tools which
What makes your product vate and change the way they work complement human inspectors. We
stand out in the market? to stay ahead of their peers in what essentially remove the tedious, dan-
is an increasingly competitive market. gerous and lengthy component of the
Donecle’s solution offers an inte- inspection process to enable human
grated package combining a robust Inspection of aircraft by inspectors to focus on areas where
UAV platform, automated navigation drones is fast becoming they add value. Similarly, our image
capabilities, image analysis algo- popular in the industry. analysis software provides strong
rithms and the ability to aggregate How long will it take for it to indications on what we think the
all that data on our secure cloud become standard industry drone has found on the aircraft, but
platform. We have not seen any other practice? in the short term, a human inspector’s
solutions out there providing that experience is invaluable to confirm
level of end-to-end integration. There is a clear demand from main- the software output.
More specifically, our system was tenance hangars for new tools to
built from the ground up for aircraft inspect aircraft faster, more efficiently What is the secret to suc-
inspections, with a different mindset and more reliably. However, deci- cess in an increasingly
from companies which are trying to sion-making processes are slower in crowded market?
combine off-the-shelf hardware and adopting new technology and only
software. the opinion leaders are willing to take We do not see the market as being
risks and move away from the estab- extremely crowded as far as our
We designed our own UAV plat- lished standards. Regulations are solution is concerned. There are a
form considering stringent safety also lagging behind in some regions couple of other players trying similar
requirements associated with and do not encourage implementa- things with UAVs but none which offer
flying in a demanding environment, tion of groundbreaking technologies. an integrated package. What makes
around a multimillion dollar aircraft. our system valuable is not neces-
In particular, we have included hard- Do you have customers sarily the UAV in itself but being able
ware redundancy feature, software spread out around the to provide a solution that goes from
fail-safes and obstacle detection globe? Has the product gen- acquiring images to analyzing them
capabilities. erated interest in Asia and while increasing the repeatability and
North America? traceability of the entire process.
Most off-the-shelf drones are either Technology is continuously evolving
remotely piloted or semi-automated Yes, our current customers are and one of our commitments is to
using GPS, which is unusable in a essentially in Europe and North keep innovating to save ahead of the
closed maintenance hangar. Similarly, America, with further deployments competition. We devote a significant
drone automation technologies planned in those regions over the portion of our resources to R&D and
revolving around beacons, indoor coming months. We have received developing new products and tech to
GPS or requiring some form of cal- and continue to receive a lot of address new applications.
ibration before each inspection are interest from around the world, with
operationally impractical. We devel- particular highlights for South-East
oped our laser positioning technology Asia, Japan, and South America. We
to ensure full automation (no UAV firmly believe in Asia as a growth
pilot), indoor/outdoor capabilities, a driver for us – looking at delivery
high-level of precision, and generally backlogs with the major aircraft man-
the ability to work out-of-the-box, ufacturers, there are going to be a
with no calibration of any kind. lot of new aircraft to inspect in the

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