Nokia and Motorola team up for AI powered drone-in-a-box

The drone-in-a-box solution integrates Nokia Drone Networks with Motorola Solutions’ CAPE drone software, and is pitched as giving public safety and industrial operations better situational awareness, streamlined remote operations, and faster decision-making by sending drones out to check out situations quickly.

It enables an organisation to remotely dispatch drones from one or multiple operation centres to assess emergencies and hazards while also receiving AI-powered intelligence, we’re told.

One benefit of using drones ahead of first responders in this way is given as being able to get an early assessment of a situation's severity, which could give information as to how and where resources can most efficiently be deployed.

CAPE software adjusts the drone’s path to avoid obstacles, make sure it stays within a geofenced area and adapts to changing terrain altitude, we’re told, while assistive AI is supposed to help operators analyse the stream of real-time data coming in. Nokia’s drone-in-a-box technology connects via 4G/LTE or 5G networks for remote operation beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS).

The release says Drone as First Responder (DFR) programs have “demonstrated an increase in first responder safety by providing tactical intelligence, enabling better coordination, oversight and transparency in operations.”

For industries like oil and gas, ports, utilities, mining, energy and manufacturing, we’re told the technology’s BVLOS and remote operation capabilities can help to enhance industrial worker safety and lower the costs of operating hard-to-reach sites like offshore wind farms, since multiple drone-in-a-box systems can serve as alternatives to helicopters doing a similar job.

“In 2018, we created and developed the world’s first public safety Drone as First Responder program in partnership with Motorola Solutions, utilizing their CAPE drone software,” said Roxana Kennedy, Chief of Police at Chula Vista Police Department in California, who was drafted into the release for comment. “Since then, we’ve successfully flown over 21,000 missions. Our DFR program has been instrumental in critical life-and-death situations by providing aerial awareness or helping officers de-escalate incidents by delivering real-time, vital information.”

Stephan Litjens, Vice President of CNS Enterprise Campus Edge Solutions at Nokia, said: “We are proud to collaborate with an innovator like Motorola Solutions in this significant step toward a more mature and sustainable drone industry for the benefit of our customers, workers, and community. Together, we are setting technology best practices in drone connectivity and AI. With an open API architecture that facilitates easy integration with third-party applications, and other solutions like Nokia’s MX Grid, Nokia Drones-in-a-Box and Motorola Solutions’ CAPE software, we are transforming drones into daily helpers for public safety and mission-critical operations.”

Meanwhile Nokia has put out another release today announcing it has teamed up with Finnish telco Elisa and completed a commercial Cloud RAN deployment in Espoo, Finland. The commercial deployment completed end-to-end 5G voice and data calls with Nokia’s 5G Cloud RAN solution, including its AirScale Massive MIMO radios, baseband software, and AI-powered MantaRay network management solution.

Kalle Lehtinen, Chief Technology Officer of Elisa, said: “This successful Cloud RAN deployment with Nokia is another important step on our cloudification which started with cloudifying the network core and edge, and now includes the radio access network. We continue to pioneer new technologies in our journey towards autonomous operations helping us to continue innovating and delivering best customer experience.”

They are calling it the first commercial 5G cloud network in Europe, and the release says this nicely tees up Elisa for the 6G era which they say is predicted to be increasingly cloud-native. It’s also supposed to help it with its ambitions around “self-driving and self-healing” autonomous networks.