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By Anna Pearson, Regional Marketing Manager – Americas, Flyability
Who is Flyability?
Flyability is a Switzerland-based company founded in 2014 that specializes in confined-space inspection drones. The Elios 3, our flagship drone, is an industry trailblazer. Featuring a protective cage, modular payload bay, and unique autonomous capabilities, our drone is driving the future of digitized industrial inspections in energy, wastewater, mining, and other major industries. Since the early days of Flyability, mine operators have quickly adopted Elios drones. They immediately saw the value in an inspection tool that could navigate uneven, unstable terrain and still collect crucial data. You can find Elios 3 drones operating in the copper mines of South America, gold mines in North America, iron ore mines in Europe, and mines across Africa, among many others globally. These mines have come to rely on drones to conduct critical inspections of their sites, avoiding dangerous human entry and greatly reducing downtime.
What is the Elios 3?
The Elios 3 is the premier indoor mapping and inspection drone, offering an unmatched combination of intelligence, versatility, and stability. In underground mining operations, typical applications include volume measurements of stockpiles, stope and ore pass mapping and inspecting equipment alongside creating scans to track progress.
The key features of the Elios 3 within a mining context include:
- Collision-tolerant design: The collision-tolerant cage along with custom firmware that empowers the drone to recognize and recover from collisions allows the Elios 3 to navigate the toughest environments with ease.
- Accurate LiDAR scans: The Surveying Payload combination of the Elios 3’s Rev 7 LiDAR sensor and FARO Connect software means this solution can provide point clouds accurate to within 1 centimeter. With a range of 100 meters and 1 million points per second, the drone’s LiDAR enables quick, accurate scans of the drone’s surroundings as it flies.
- Powerful visual data collection: A 4K camera plus an onboard LiDAR means you are capturing data in real-time. Points of interest can be marked via the camera, and they are location tagged in the 3D model, showing you the location of the fault or problem you have identified in flight. This is especially useful in these GPS-denied environments, when we know mines need georeferenced locations to make informed decisions.
How does automation fit into this?
Mines are an ever-changing environment, and in moments of unexpected change you need to be able to rely on your technology. The Flyability team knew that a key part of this is getting the drone out of a potentially hazardous area quickly when things go sideways. In manual drone operations, managing battery levels, navigating in low-visibility conditions, and handling tight exit paths adds pressure and leaves little margin for error. By integrating intelligence into every flight, Elios 3 Autonomy simplifies operations, reinforces safety margins, and expands who can confidently execute complex missions. It continuously interprets its surroundings and solves complex navigation in real time – so you can fly further, inspect deeper, and operate with total confidence.
Return to signal
The first step towards autonomy, it reacts to signal loss, and the drone automatically retraces its flight path up to 300 metres until it reconnects to the controller or reaches the take-off location.
Smart return to home
Automatically calculates the shortest, safest path home, actively detecting and avoiding obstacles along the way when faced with the need to get the drone back as quickly and safely as possible.
Resume inspection
Autonomously guides the drone back to the last Return-to-Home trigger point, following the shortest route to save time, maintain efficiency, and minimize mission downtime.
The most exciting part of this Autonomy Engine is that it is constantly evolving and improving. Flyability hopes to bring its customers along on the automation journey by building it into their existing practices. With new releases coming this fall, you can rest assured that the Flyability team is dedicated to making your inspections smarter, faster, and easier than ever before.
Want to learn more? Visit our website or reach out through our contact form.
About Anna Pearson
Anna joined Flyability in 2023 in their Denver office and is responsible for localized marketing efforts across the Americas. She brings her marketing experience into the world of drones, bringing together customers and experts through in-person events, webinars, trade shows, and more.
About Flyability
Since launching in 2014, Flyability has become a trusted provider of internal inspection solutions, enabling remote data collection with cutting edge hardware and software for inspection professionals to help them improve safety, reduce downtimes, and cut costs for their internal inspections.