How Aerologix Matches Drone Pilots To Clients

Today, Lewis is the chief pilot at Aerologix, a platform co-founded by Caska that matches drone pilots with companies who need services. Uber for drones, as they call it. For pilots, it enables them to find work that would otherwise be unavailable. For clients, it allows them to access local pilots safe in the knowledge they have all obtained the appropriate qualifications and CASA licences.

It’s not just the pilot and the drone they get: the business has developed software to interpret results that are then made available in the Aerologix portal for customer access. “It’s a full end-to-end solution,” says Caska. “Our customers are loving it! Already, more than 950 pilots are onboarded, and clients have included big hitters such as Getty Images, Nokia and multiple insurance companies.” Aside from simple photography, projects regularly include thermal imagery and orthomosaic mapping.

“We check each pilot individually who comes onto our platform to ensure they’re operating within the stringent rules,” says Lewis, who even helps them complete the fiddly paperwork for larger jobs, making the whole process more accessible to everyone. So far, Aerologix estimates it has already completed more than 1,000 projects and earlier this year made headlines itself when it secured $1.5 million in investment by private equity giant Nightingale Partners.

Caska was something of a trailblazer himself. A former Qantas pilot, a kite surfing accident broke his neck and ended his earlier career. Undeterred, he transferred his passion to drones, consulting the NSW government and Surf Life Saving to set up a drone shark surveillance network along its coasts. The system he instigated was so intelligent it could spot bull and great white sharks when they came within 15 metres of a swimmer, sounding an alarm.

For now, though, Aerologix is trying to capture as much of the market as it can. “We cater for basic jobs such as real estate pictures for promotions up to complex 3D modelling and LIDAR imaging solutions,” says Lewis. Telecommunications surveys, for instance, are increasingly being led by drones, which can provide a wealth of information for project engineers before telcos dispatch staff to climb up structures. The accuracy of the information is impressive, with 3D models giving millimetre measurements to decision-makers – highly useful when they need to decide where to strap on a new antenna, for example. Lewis personally trains pilots to complete tower surveys, and recruits are available for hire in WA, NT, SA, Victoria, NSW and Queensland. During COVID, with interstate borders closed, drones went from being nice to have to invaluable to get vital work done.

“We’re also creating more efficient means for these companies to complete these otherwise hazardous operations,” says Lewis. “In the roofing industry, people have to climb up on the roof and manually inspect hail damage, gutters and everything like that. Whereas we can send a qualified pilot out via our platform, who can complete the job in seven minutes. The drone can spit outfull3D damage reports, which can then be sent to an insurance company for assessment. It takes out that middleman, and you’ll find now a lot of builders are pushing towards using remote devices because they don’t enjoy having to climb on people’s roofs.”

But all that is just the beginning, with Aerologix about to release flight navigation systems called Aeropath that will enable it to automate drone flights around complex structures. “This will be a game-changer,” says Caska. “Many of our pilots have been testing the beta version of it with great feedback. It makes the task easy and accessible to almost anyone.

Next on the horizon is drone delivery. We have recently been onboarded into the CASAdigital sky ecosystem, and this will provide our drone pilots with even more recourses such as access to current airspace information. This was a solid achievement for our team and means we are the first Australian-based drone tech company to have both iOS and Android apps pass the rigorous testing by CASA and be fully endorsed and approved. To say we are thrilled is an understatement. It will also help us open up our drone delivery network with soon to be announced major partnerships.”

Right now though, beyond visual line of sight is currently taking up most of Lewis’ time.“Currently, only a couple of companies are doing it, but this is where the market is going,” he says. The devices themselves, he adds, have become so advanced that there is no chance of them failing mid-air. “It’s really close. I guess the drawback at the moment is just proving it toCASA. These aircraft are ready to go. The ones we plan to get have done hundreds of thousands of flight hours in testing – they have the same safety record as a standard commercial airliner. They don’t fail.”

“It won’t be long until you will see drones flying across major cities doing some very useful tasks,” says Caska.“They will integrate into society like all the other amazing technology we take for granted today. It’s much closer than people realise.”