Automatic processing of drone inspection images

Based in the seaport of Zeebrugge, Droonhaavn is the first Unmanned Aerial Vehicle business centre and ecosystem at the Belgian coast. It aims to further establish the economic potential of drones in Flanders. ML2Grow has been a partner of founder Elwin Van Herck of Noordzee Drones from 2017 on.

We also demonstrated the potential of Machine Learning in drone applications, which is the result of fruitful cooperation between ML2Grow and Droonhaavn and its founders at Noordzee Drones.

Our CTO Joachim van der Herten contributed to the Adaptive Line-based sampling TRajectOrieS (ALBATROS) algorithm, which was published in international research papers. This is a sequential sampling algorithm to gradually increase the sampling density over the entire measurement space while minimising the traversed path length of the measurement probe.  It consists of a combined coverage path planning algorithm and a path sampling algorithm and is functional in any convex 2D or 3D space.

This is especially useful in a drone context. It allows drones to collect samples (e.g. air quality measurements or photographic samples) in an optimal cost-saving way, reducing flight time. It outperforms traditional one-shot and sequential sampling methods, optimally spreading sampling points in the entire sample space.

We do not only provide cost-efficient sample collection using drones, but our Machine Learning solutions also allow the transformation of the collected data (images, video or other measurements) into valuable knowledge and automatic decisions. Think of applications in agriculture (harvest prediction, disease monitoring, crop protection,…), surveillance, infrastructure monitoring, element detection and labelling, stock monitoring,… It’s not only about automatic measuring, but also the next step that gives real business value: prediction. Think of, for example, from stock monitoring to stock prediction.

At ML2Grow, we congratulate the founders of Droonhaavn on this great initiative and look forward to a great cooperation with the whole Droonhaavn community in order to make it a great success story with a real positive economic impact on our companies and society.

Have a safe flight!