Drones and Digital Twins: Together Forever

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Drones and digital twins are both rapidly growing technologies that are having a big impact on the energy industry. Drones can be used to inspect remote or dangerous areas, while digital twins can help operators better understand how their assets are performing. Digital twins are bringing drone data to (virtual) life, and drones continue to enhance the capabilities of digital twins. 

Together, they’re a match made in heaven.

Optelos, which helps companies perform drone-based and other asset inspections, told DRONELIFE that their clients are seeing success using data collected by drones in 3D digital twins of O&G assets, utility towers, wind turbines, and more. 

From Siemens

Drones are proven effective for collecting inspection and other data in the energy industry. But if O&G companies collect the data and don't do anything with it, the drones aren’t being used to their full value. AI, immersive tech, and digital twins help take drone data and turn it into actionable insights for:

  • Predictive maintenance

  • Asset optimization

  • Emissions monitoring 

  • Inspection reporting

  • And more

In fact, drone adoption and scaling may be on the rise thanks to an overall increase in industry digitalization. With more companies looking to collect and analyze massive amounts of data—while doing so cost effectively and with worker safety a top priority—drones are becoming part of the team. As data management and analysis—especially artificial intelligence (AI)—has continued to improve, companies can collect and use more data across the enterprise. 

Connected companies that are far along in the process of digitalization, or are working on their digital transformation, are finding more uses and increased ROI for drones. The downstream effects of this are:

  • More hardware, software, and service providers

  • Bigger pushes for regulatory clarification

  • Specialized drones for unique use cases

  • On the other hand, broad-use drones with many applications

  • Big data management and analysis efforts, often enterprise-wide

This wave of drone deployment comes with big money. Enterprises are investing big in drones, drone operators, digital twin technologies, data analysts, and service providers that can help bring drone and digital twin projects to life. 

vHive, which offers cloud-based enterprise drone and digital twin solutions, just closed a $25 million series B funding round led by PSG. This is just one example of startup and R&D money flowing into drones and digital twins.

Drones are flying off the shelves and out into the O&G fields. And digital twins are multiplying. Hopefully none of them are evil.