DC Velocity - May 2017

Te c hn o l o gy D ATA CA P TU R E

Other logistics-related opportunities include using drone cameras to scan buildings for safety and security purposes, inspect lots and yards, track the location of trucks as they approach the dock, and locate trucks in a staging area when it’s their turn to load, said Bruce Bleikamp, a sales manager for Cimcorp, a manufacturer and integrator of automated robotic solutions.

“Sometimes drivers get tired
of waiting and they just leave,”
he said. “Say you told the guy to go park in slot #67 at the
end of the row, but then when you go back to get him, he’s
not there. Now you could dispatch a drone to fly over the
area and locate him, so you could have somebody go knock
on his window and tell him to get back here.”
Alternatively, a DC manager could dispatch a drone
equipped with a camera to hover over a fourth- or fifth-lev-
el rack in a high-bay warehouse and perform a quick inven-
tory count, eliminating the need to send a lift truck to the
location, pull the pallet down to ground level, and have
someone conduct a manual inspection, Bleikamp said.

Although not yet in widespread use, these applications
demonstrate the potential of drones to save precious time
in logistics operations. The technology still has a ways to
go, Bleikamp said, but adoption rates could soar as vendors
address limitations such as the inability of drone-mounted
cameras to see inventory stacked in multiple rows, like
goods in a push-back or flow-through rack.

CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF?

As for the market outlook for drones in logistics-related applications, Bob Etris, for one, is decidedly bullish. Etris, who is a partner and director at Evans Inc., a Falls Church, Va.-based consulting firm, said this niche market is growing fast and has a great deal of potential.

That’s partly because regulations are looser on private property—such as a warehouse—than in public airspace, he said. Right now, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules still apply, particularly if a warehouse is close to an airport or other “controlled airspace” that is tightly managed for aviation safety. But even those rules are expected to change within the next 18 to 36 months, as federal regulators begin easing restrictions on drone use for applications such as search and rescue operations or locating fugitives. Once those changes take effect, the market for drones in business applications could really take off, Etris said.

FAA figures indicate that drone use is already picking

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