Smarter Drones, UAVs and
Tele-Control or Autonomous Robots

Evolution of Drones, UAVs & Tele-Controlled or Autonomous Robots

The world’s first drone (which we’ll define as a mechanically-driven unmanned propelled aerial craft) is the Ruston Proctor Aerial Target. It was invented by Great Britain in 1916 as the world’s first pilotless winged aircraft. The first drone of all form factors was a drone ship, invented by Nikola Tesla almost 20 years earlier. During a public exhibition of this teleoperated boat at Madison Square Garden in 1898, the crowd that witnessed the demonstration made outrageous claims about the workings of the boat, such as magic, telepathy, and being piloted by a trained monkey hidden inside. Both these drones were controlled by rudimentary radio technology. Since then, drones have evolved into a multitude of different form factors, like airplane, multi-copter, ships or unmanned surface vehicles, submarines or unmanned underwater vehicles, robots, and more) used for various tasks (defense, industrial, inspection, security, surveillance, agriculture, customer-facing, logistics, transportation, etc.).

Expectations from drones, UAVs, and robots, are increasing rapidly, from live video streaming over different networks, like wireless, cellular (4G/LTE, 5G), satellite, and other communication channels, as well as Over-the-Air Programming, distribution of AI Models to the edge, etc.

What is AnyConnect Smarter AI™ Camera Platform?

AnyConnect’s Smarter AI™ Camera Platform is a set of software libraries for cameras, mobile devices, computers, and an overarching cloud platform that makes a camera (such as drones, UAVs and robots) on it smarter.

AnyConnect’s patented technologies enable guaranteed and low latency video & audio connections through NATs, especially wireless and cellular networks & cloud video recording.

Our platform excels in enabling computer vision at the edge, and in the cloud, in a secure and data-protection-compliant way. A console provides a full overview of all connections and provides granular control over the entire system.

How does AnyConnect make your drones, UAV & robots smarter?

Wireless, cellular & satellite ready drones, UAV and robots

Drones, UAV, and robots are designed around mobility by nature, and inherently require a lot of different connectivity. From 4G/LTE/5G to Wi-Fi, Satellite, and other communications channels, or a mix of connectivity options, those links provide their own challenges like packet loss, variable channel capacity, intermittence, etc. The AnyConnect Smarter AI™ Camera Platform makes your drones, UAV, and robots ready for wireless, cellular, satellite connections, and more. Getting the best possible live video stream or record video, audio, and data with the help of AnyConnect’s patented technologies for instant connections as well as adaptive bitrate streaming.

Support for drones, UAV and robots with very low bandwidth

Some types of drones, UAVs, and robots are connected with different connection technologies. Those drones can move from high bandwidth, low latency communication channel to very low bandwidth (i.e., a few KBps). To make those drones, UAVs, and robots as useful as possible AnyConect offers to send a live video stream when possible of very low bandwidth, and upon request, send a single native resolution image, where all the details are visible. Other ways are supported, like to send a low to mid resolution images and allow users to zoom within a region of interest digitally. The camera will only provide the part of the image needed, saving bandwidth further.

Deploy intelligence at the edge for drones, UAVs, and robots

Get alerted, in real-time, when something that requires attention is spotted by your drone. Whether you train your own neural networks, or get them from someone for security or operational functionalities, like people counting, incident detection, or recognition, AnyConnect’s Smarter AI™ Camera Platform enables you to and deploy, manage and monitor neural networks at the edge seamlessly over the air.

Edge Inference Acceleration in drones, UAVs, and robots

There is a gold rush for AI Accelerators. The abundance of choice and the rapid refresh rate makes it difficult to choose the right one. Factors to be considered are “what if I have different cameras on my drones, each with different types of AI Accelerators, how to support them? AnyConnect’s Smarter AI™ Camera Platform takes care of this. AI Containers™ allows you to deploy AI Models to the edge, at scale, and over the air, on multiple AI Accelerators.

Drones, UAVs, and robots cyber security is non-negotiable

AnyConnect is serious about cybersecurity. Access Control is native to the system, streams are encrypted, and all clients are authenticated. With AnyConnect’s deep expertise in chips integration, we integrate crypto cores integrated in SoCs, like ARM’s TrustZone or the Trusted Platform Module (TPM 2.0). AnyConnect conducts external security audits on its platforms and libraries regularly.

Future proof your drones, UAV, and robots

With AnyConnect for your drones, UAVs, and robots, you can envision the future with confidence. The platform offers Over-the-Air (OTA) Programming and updates for edge devices, as well as a clear support strategy regarding operating systems. Multiple support plans are available to accommodate the needs of your customers. You should never be locked with a specific hardware manufacturer. With AnyConnect’s expertise and relationship with System-on-Chip and AI Accelerator manufacturers, our platform gives you choice, freedom, flexibility, and confidence.

Simplified onboarding & management for drones, UAVs, and robots

Every customer’s time is precious, while IT-savvy resources are rare, expensive, and frequently busy. That’s why AnyConnect has placed great attention to the Onboarding process for cameras and clients, ensuring that anyone can do it—not just the experts. Decrease administration & support costs with AnyConnect’s Console, which provides centralized management, configuration, and access control. Understand exactly what is happening on your drone, UAV, and robot networks, in real-time.

Simple integration with your drone, UAV, and robot management system

Complex, time-consuming, expensive, multi-site, and multi-company software integration projects tend to be late, over budget, and fail more often than other projects. AnyConnect has a set of REST APIs for rapid and simple integration with your UAV, robot, and drone, management systems. Adding AnyConnect Smarter AI™ Camera Platform features to your mobile application is simple with Anyconnect’s Android and iOS libraries. Web and Windows Clients are supported upon request. Social login and single sign-on (SSO) is supported through OAuth 2.0.

We help your drones, UAVs, and robots to comply with privacy regulations

Compliance with privacy regulations is a significant burden for video-enabled devices interacting with the public or just with cameras flying on top of people. The compliance falls on people operating the system. However, AnyConnect has it’s system ready for GDPR compliance and has AnyConnect has no ties with countries prone to controversy. Audits are simplified as our console provides a log of every event and connection. Recording video in the cloud makes it difficult to tamper with or delete video/audio recordings.

Support for existing drones, UAVs and robots

Deploying completely new AI-Driven, connected cameras within the system available in your drones, UAV, or robots is ideal. When the time to market (demo or PoC) is short, or when there is a need to support legacy systems, or even when a need for a staged migration, AI Gateways come to the rescue. An AI gateway sits as a separate system within your drone, UAV or robot, to transform its cameras into an AI-driven, connected camera network. AI Gateways are compatible with most RTSP and ONVIC cameras, and they can be integrated upon request.