AI Drone Equipped with Human Vision Monitors City Gas Pipelines

SK C&C Expands 'Aiden Drone-Based Patrol Inspection Service'

[Asia Economy Reporter Jin-gyu Lee] SK Inc. C&C is expanding its city gas pipeline safety management business by utilizing vision artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Vision AI refers to AI that replicates human visual recognition capabilities.

On the 1st, SK C&C announced that it will expand the 'AIDEN drone-based patrol inspection service,' developed in collaboration with SK E&S, from the Cheongju area to the Gumi, Pohang, and Chuncheon regions.

The AIDEN drone-based patrol inspection service is a cloud-based safety management service that analyzes various videos, including footage captured by drones and surrounding CCTVs, in real time to identify and warn of dangerous situations. Drones linked with SK C&C's vision AI solution AIDEN monitor facilities and gas pipelines located in safety-vulnerable areas such as densely populated residential neighborhoods or housing development zones that are difficult for humans to access.

The drone inspection service also prevents accidents caused by unreported excavation work. It detects the movements of excavators of various colors and sizes in real time and, by linking with geographic information systems, displays the locations of underground gas pipelines through augmented reality (AR).

This is the first case in Korea of applying AR and AI technologies in drones for safety management fields such as excavation work management. In the past, videos captured by drones and mobile CCTVs had to be manually reviewed by people.

This year, perspective has been applied to AR to improve location recognition accuracy. Real-time analysis of surrounding CCTV information and mobile videos eliminates concerns about failing to detect dangerous situations. The recognition rate, which was 90% when the service started last year, has now increased to 93%. Lee Won-il, head of SK C&C's Platform 3 Group, said, "We will continue to develop the service in cooperation with local governments and others so that it can be widely used for safety management in not only hard-to-access dangerous areas but also extensive regions."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.