Beth Kigel, vice president, intelligent transportation and emerging mobility solutions at Florida-based HNTB Corporation facilitated the keynote discussion at AUVSI’s XPONENTIAL in Orlando, Florida. The discussion featured Eric Schwartz, manager technology and innovation at Florida Power and Light and Ariel Avitan, chief commercial officer and co-founder of Percepto.
 

“Dronifying” Florida

Eric Schwartz is quick to point out that Florida Power & Light's (FP&L) chairman describes his organization as a technology company - that happens to sell electricity.  Indeed, FP&L’s technology plays a prominent role as they help "dronify" Florida.

The state has championed legislation and policy that promotes autonomous operations in many categories, including public transportation, critical infrastructure inspection, pharmaceutical delivery, and many more projects throughout the state. 

FP&L is using drones to assist in infrastructure inspection.  They are using drones to inspect substations now and plan to expand the effort.  Specifically, their goal is to use drones to inspect every one of their 600 substations in the future.   In 2021 they launched over 120,000 drone flights.   They are expanding their use of autonomy with drones as well as other technologies.

Intent on safety and privacy, Eric Schwartz said they took great care in launching all their flights and notified all customers in the flight path.  Before launch, they let stakeholders know about their operations by various means of communications which included automated calls.  They also invited customers to follow their programs by directing them to their website to see precisely what, where, and when they planned to deploy their drone flights.
 

Scaling Upward

Their goals and objectives are ambitious as they look towards a future with autonomous technology.  That explains why they’ve forged a partnership with Percepto to help them scale to an even greater volume of autonomous flights.  Percepto specializes in the automation and unification of visual data collected by any device and at any time.  With Percepto, FP&L hopes to increase their volume of flights and boost the ratio of flights per drone pilot, over time.  They have built a mesh formation of ground-based networks and plan to scale-out with a more extensive autonomous network.  They are moving incrementally with their plans living by the mantra “crawl, walk, and run.”

The partnership with Percepto is expected to not only help further “dronify” Florida - well ahead of many other states and power companies - but also create many new high technology jobs as they scale upward and outward.  

In planning to scale, they intend to use sophisticated ground robotics as part of their partnership with Percepto.  They seek opportunities to convert manual processes and operations to automated ones that will be performed by ground robots. 
 

Safety at the Vanguard

Safety is at the vanguard of all efforts that include their employees and customers.  Florida Power & Light is dedicated to safety, while staying in full compliance with FAA regulations and any other prevailing regulations.

FP&L and their partners employ the latest technologies which includes machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other advanced technologies.  They will use such technology while adhering to privacy and cybersecurity guidelines and filtering thousands of photos, allowing only necessary data to be used.
 

Forging the Future Autonomous Florida

FP&L is admirable in living up to their objectives.  Percepto is helping them get there.  Together they’re helping to build a robust autonomous environment that Florida now represents. 

As Beth Kigel describes it, FP&L’s work is the "tip of the iceberg."  There is more to follow as they set out to scale and automate with autonomous systems and take a holistic approach by converging many technologies, increase overall reliability of their service and operations, and create value for their customers and stakeholders throughout the state.