Aerium Analytics: Flying a new course
Aerium Analytics has a lot going on these days: apart from their bread-and-butter work mapping, monitoring and inspecting oil & gas and forestry projects and assets via drone, the Calgary-based company is also pioneering new ways to keep airports safe, helping develop new Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) technologies for defense and aerospace applications, and focusing on software development so they can pull value out of the data they collect from the sky.
Did we mention the robotic falcon?
THE BACK STORY
Like many tech companies in Calgary, Aerium has roots in the energy industry. When executives at The Lorrnel Group and Remedy Energy Services, two well-established oil and gas consultancies, decided it was time to diversify, they used their decades of operational experience and focused on their remote sensing practice, beginning with drones.
Aerium was incorporated in 2016, with the mission of integrating data collection and management into its drone capabilities. During a 2017 Alberta Trade Mission to Japan, the team found themselves in the booth next to representatives of the Edmonton International Airport (YEG). Parties on both sides quickly saw that there was an emerging opportunity for UAV airport safety services—and in a lucky twist of fate Aerium had just been introduced to an interesting new technology: the RoBird, a robotic flying bird drone.
IT’S A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE
Canada Geese are scary, in part because they’re scared of nothing and no one.
Except peregrine falcons.
They’re not alone. Lots of birds, in fact, are scared of peregrines. Which makes Aerium’s RoBird ornithopter such a valuable asset to airport managers.
The cornerstone of AERIUM's smart wildlife management tools, this robotic peregrine falcon helps keep birds out of flight paths—and out of plane engines—at airports across North America. And that’s hugely important; 2018 FAA data reveals that in the USA alone, airplanes collided with birds 40 times a day.
In northern Alberta, they’re also useful for protecting birds and keeping them away from oil sands tailing ponds.
The RoBird uses biomimicry—it looks and behaves like an actual raptor and flaps its wings to propel itself forward—to convince birds that the robotic predator in their midst is the real deal. The first RoBird model is a peregrine falcon because that is one of the world’s most feared aerial predators. Present on six continents, the RoBird model is recognized by migratory birds and also makes the model a viable wildlife management solution across the globe. It works well on flocking birds from Canada Geese on down (size wise). For larger birds—vultures, other hawks, and eagles—a commensurately larger raptor is required, and indeed a bald eagle is in the works.
The RoBird is a delightful innovation and a lot of fun to watch in action (you can see a New York Times video of that here), but it’s also really good at what it does: RoBird is proven to successfully decrease bird presence and bird strikes at airports. At the Grand Forks International Airport in North Dakota, for example, strikes are down 80% year over year—no doubt in part because the RoBird helped reduce the resident gull population at the neighboring wastewater treatment plant from 6000 to just 200. In Edmonton, where it all started, there has been a consistent drop in strikes, year over year, for the last four years.
“We didn’t invent RoBird, but we have innovated significantly on it,” says Jordan Cicoria, VP of Operations at Aerium. “In fact, we saw such value in it that we acquired the RoBird ornithopter drone and all associated patents and knowledge from Clear Flight Solutions, with whom we have worked for many years.”
AIRPORT SOLUTIONS
The Edmonton International Airport works in close partnership with Aerium above and beyond the RoBird project. From a safety perspective, drones must be integrated carefully into the off-the-ground presence at any airport and once of the reasons Aerium is a trusted partner at YEG is its years of piloting experience.
The company is permitted to use the airport as a testing ground, and YEG has gone as far as to shut down runways for those tests to proceed. Aerium uses drones to survey the ends of runways for obstacle limitations—for example, buildings, cranes, and trees—in the glide path. They can also perform analysis on lighting systems and drainage and help in the development of safety protocols and emergency response. Aerium is conducting similar work at Whitehorse International, where Aerium has scanned approaches in coordination with NAVCanada and identified some tree issues that affected the safety of flight paths.
In late 2019, Aerium debuted a specialized drone—the microdrone md4-1000—on the runways of YEG. This drone collects LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and imagery data to help airport authorities prioritize where and when to perform preventative maintenance. The Edmonton International Airport is one of the only Canadian airports who use this technology, which helps avoid shutdowns and accidents and promotes compliance to safety regulations.
“We’re showcasing and pushing hard on cornering the Remote Piloted Aircraft (RPA) market and airports,” says Jordan Cicoria. “Aerium is already one of the foremost providers in the world, with more than 1800 flights on airport property.” Alongside flying airport missions in Edmonton, North Dakota, Whitehorse, and Chicago O’Hare, Aerium is in close collaboration with Transport Canada and the US Federal Aviation Administration with regard to regulations and collection parameters.
A new collaboration with the Calgary International Airport has been in the works through Summer of 2020 with more upcoming projects in Fall 2020.
CALGARY LIVING LAB
Aerium has a unique asset on which to draw: the city’s Point Trotter Autonomous Systems Testing Area (ASTA), which is a mere 15-minute drive from the company office. Located in the city’s southeast, this 125-acre site allows corporate and academic teams to conduct in-the-air research. At Point Trotter, Aerium is continuously refining its UAV products, including the RoBird. Point Trotter is part of the Calgary Living Lab initiative, which permits vetted innovators to make use of city land, transportation corridors and public spaces to test their creations. Just another way Calgary demonstrates its commitment to launching business and innovation in support of a vibrant local economy.
ON BUILDING A WORLD-CLASS TECH COMPANY IN CALGARY
Jordan Cicoria is a Calgarian born and bred. “I'm proud of this place, says Jordan. “We’ve always been problem solvers here, which goes back to our agricultural and oil and gas heritage. If we have a problem and a solution doesn’t exist, we’ll build it.” Building those solutions is made easier by the presence of financial resources, a deep talent pool, and a seasoned business community that’s increasingly interested in innovation. “When I was in oil and gas, I didn’t understand what the tech environment was like in Calgary,” says Jordan Cicoria. “But we have an incredible tech ecosystem in this city, and it’s growing every day.” The company has found it easy to ramp up their operations as their business grows, thanks to the city’s supply of highly educated developers, geomatics specialists and machine learning specialists, among many other technical specialties. “Our staff includes PhD mathematicians, machine learning experts and pilots. At Aerium, we’re blending their skills together to solve real-world problems.”
Jordan Cicoria, Vice President, Operations
“We have an incredible tech ecosystem in this city, and it’s growing every day.”
AERIUM ANALYTICS
One of the most important initiatives that Aerium is embarking on is building out a suite of integrated geospatial data software. Geospatial data isn’t just a matter of bits and bytes—it must include location, images, optics, cloud points; in other words, it involves massive amounts of data. For example, in order to parse whether an airport runway is in compliance—and to do that instantaneously—a massive data set must be in the background. “We will have identified gaps, flown different data sets at different airports, made our ML algorithms as robust as possible,” says Jordan Cicoria. “We’re moving away from just flying. We’re now automating the analysis of the data we gather.”
Aerium is able to reduce the time spent collecting data by 40-60% as compared to ground collection—and at the same or lower cost. This allows them to help companies, particularly those in oil and gas and forestry, to scope projects, engineer and build solutions with the latest and best geospatial information, conduct quality control based on real-time site surveys, and monitor post-construction environmental conditions. Aerium’s data analytics products can also have a big influence on worker safety, especially in the context of large machinery and rugged terrain by calculating erosion, slope, vegetation and topography.
PROJECT SKYSENSUS
Aerium Analytics has partnering with Alberta companies UxS Foremost UAS Test Range, Canadian UAVS, and defense contractor Peraton on a five-year R&D/commercialization project into Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) capabilities. BVLOS means that a pilot/operator does not have to maintain line-of-sight contact with an aerial vehicle, which of course enables the drone to cover much greater distances, collect more data per flight, make critical deliveries, or perform inspection of infrastructure, among many other uses. The project is intended to advance technology in pursuit of safety and to generate risk modelling.
WHAT’S NEXT
Aerium intends to continue growing as a RPAS complex environment service provider while building the emerging analytics side of the business. The company currently has three different service lines: tech-enabled solutions, RoBird® ornithopter manufacturing, and building out data analytics software. The next step is to develop these streams further and build out the North American Market.
“In the coming 3-5 years, we expect our Calgary headquarters to employ 50-100 people,” says Jordan Cicoria. “In 2020-21, we’ll see a substantial number of partnerships with Calgary and with the University of Alberta to help with what we’re building out.”
The sky, as they say, is the limit.