The automotive industry unleashes a litany of surprises on a yearly basis thanks to its employees’ drive to innovate the field. Now, with an influx of drone technology, the industry has taken another step into the future. Instead of boosting a vehicle’s ability to operate on the road, though, drones offer more practical assistance to the plants and engineering facilities that create the cars of today and tomorrow.
The latest car technologies would not be operational on the road without these types of environments. The green technologies of the future would be further delayed if automotive engineers focused solely on the vehicles they produced.
Enter, then, the drone, and its ability to make working in an automotive plant a little bit simpler. Employees do not need to worry about a drone taking their jobs, of course. Rather, employees in offices and on the floor can collaborate with drone technology to continue producing car tech innovations.
Drones and motorway breakdowns
360 Towing Solutions in the United States wants to begin using surveillance drones to help get broken down cars off of local and international motorways. As of September 2019, the company had yet to debut their affiliated business drones, but plans are in the works to ensure that a fleet can be dispatched in the near future.
Ideally, 360 Towing wants to be able to operate its fleet of surveillance drones from a control room, from which they’ll be able to dispatch the appropriate trucks and drivers to attend to a motorway breakdown.
While, on the one hand, drivers may see a flock of surveillance drones as a violation of their personal privacy, the presence of these drones would help stranded drivers receive help with their vehicles faster. While 360 Towing Solutions may not be the first company to debut such a fleet, they’ve certainly laid the groundwork for another company to do just that.
Drones and manufacturing plant safety
Ford and the Ford Dagenham Engine Plant in the United Kingdom were among the first automotive plants to adopt drone technology not for further automotive development but rather for plant security. When the company began using drones to maintain plant safety in 2019, they set peer company, ZF, up to do the same in 2019.
Instead of relying on patrolling drones, like a 1984 mimicry, the Ford Dagenham Engine Plant is using drones to perform the tasks that are too dangerous for human employees. This means allowing a drone to tackle jobs that would otherwise place an employee in danger due to height, heat or chemical exposure.
For example, the team operating at the plant at the moment use drones to assess the security of the heavy machinery gantries, or the systems in place to keep the aforementioned heavy machinery functional. What used to be a twelve-hour process now takes significantly less time thanks to the technological innovation that is the drone.
In fact, the time spent assessing the gantries has dropped from twelve hours to a mere twelve minutes courtesy of the cameras equipped to the plant drones.
Nowadays, ZF uses an equivalent flock of drones to obtain monitor the plant’s assets, but also to deliver spare parts to consumers within the warehouse’s radius in Germany.
Drones and plant upkeep
In this same vein, Ford intends to expand its use of drones to the care and keeping of the plant’s exterior. The areas that are difficult or dangerous from human employees to reach can be readily accessed and inspected by drones and their operators in half or less of the time.
This means pipework and machinery inspections could take place in a more reasonable amount of time. Ford also predicts that its plant could use drones to detect air leaks that might otherwise compromise sensitive technologies.
Overall, drones in the Ford Dagenham Engine Plant are taking on unexpected responsibilities – ones designed to make work simpler, yes, but ones prioritise the safety of employees over additional technological innovations.
Drones and the vehicular inspection process
Ford isn’t the only automotive manufacturer investing in drone technology. Mitsubishi Electric Automotive America also intends to use drones to expand their vehicles’ ability to interact with their environment.
Mitsubishi proposes additional research into this kind of drone research not only to keep the roads clearer but to make parking easier in urban areas. Who wouldn’t want to scout out a parking lot for a free spot if they had the opportunity?
The only question is this: could drivers use drones to pre-seize parking spots, or would different cities have to instate legislation regarding drone behaviour?
Drones and electric vehicles – fossil fuels, biofuels
In an attempt to get away from consumers’ reliance on fossil fuels, Lexus has seized on interest in electric vehicles to produce its first electric prototype. The LF-30 Electric Concept will potentially pair with an in-vehicle drone to ensure driver safety while on the road.
The marriage of drones and biofuels is, thus far, a tentative one, but Lexus’s progress bodes well for other manufacturers interested in the same idea.
The versatility of drones makes them an asset to the automotive industry. Given the field’s reputation for seizing on new technologies, it only makes sense that use of these tools has developed in 2019.