Operational challenges we want to understand.
Positioning problems look different in every sector. This page sets out the challenges we see in four areas, how our intended technology could help, and the questions we would like to explore with people who work in them.
Infrastructure inspection
Inspection often means flying close to, beneath or inside large structures. Under a bridge deck or near tall concrete and steel, satellite signals can be blocked or reflected, and position quality can change over a few metres.
- Signals blocked under decks, arches and in tunnel approaches
- Reflected signals (multipath) near large surfaces
- Need for repeatable positions to compare inspections over time
A visual-inertial estimate could help an aircraft keep a consistent sense of its position next to the structure, and report when its confidence is falling.
- Where do your current flights lose position quality?
- How do your pilots handle those sections today?
Energy and utilities
Energy assets are often remote and made of large metal structures. Flying close to towers and conductors can affect magnetic heading, and remote sites can have limited communications coverage.
- Magnetic interference near high-voltage equipment
- Large metal structures close to the flight path
- Remote sites with limited mobile coverage
Navigation that relies less on any single sensor could make close-quarters work around these assets more predictable.
- Which asset types are hardest to fly around?
- What does a lost or degraded position cost you on a typical job?
Industrial operations
Many industrial spaces are partly or fully enclosed. Inside, satellite positioning is generally unavailable, and the environment can be cluttered, poorly lit or changing.
- No usable satellite signal indoors or under cover
- Cluttered spaces with pipework, racking and plant
- Variable lighting and dust affecting cameras
Camera and inertial navigation is one route to autonomous flight in spaces where GPS was never an option.
- Which inspections are still done manually because of access?
- What conditions inside your sites would a system need to handle?
Commercial drone systems
Manufacturers face growing demand for aircraft that keep working when GPS is degraded, without adding significant cost, weight or development time.
- Adding resilient navigation without redesigning hardware
- Integrating with existing flight-control stacks
- Showing operators how the system behaves when confidence drops
Silvereye is intended as a software layer for compatible platforms, built around open interfaces such as PX4, ROS 2 and MAVLink.
- What sensors and compute do your platforms already carry?
- What would you need to see before evaluating a navigation layer?
Does this match what you see in the field?
If your operations run into these limits, or different ones, we would like to hear about them. Real operational problems will shape what we build first.