Predictive Maintenance · Security and Compliance
Traditional inspection, monitoring and protection of critical infrastructure required sending staff into the field, consuming significant time and money, slowing incident detection and increasing operational risk for assets such as power lines, pipelines and forested areas.
Reported impact
Telefónica reports faster remote inspection and monitoring, earlier anomaly detection, lower pilot travel effort and costs, safer operations, and improved real-time decision-making for critical infrastructure management.
Telefónica has built a Drone as a Service operating model for critical infrastructure inspection that combines its drone service, Drone-in-a-Box technology, 5G network, edge computing, computer vision and artificial intelligence. At the ingest layer, drones stationed at the mission site capture high-definition, thermal and visual imagery from assets such as power lines, pipelines and forested areas while a remote pilot operates them from a control centre. The 5G network links the field location to the control centre and carries video and telemetry with licensed-spectrum connectivity and encryption. Rather than sending raw imagery to a central server, edge computing hosts the computer vision and AI workloads close to the network edge, where they detect anomalies, structural defects and intrusions in near real time. The system then filters and prioritises findings, sending conclusions and alerts to human operators for supervised decisions, regulatory compliance and faster response.
At the mission site, drones and on-board cameras capture thermal and visual imagery from critical assets. The feeds travel over Telefónica's 5G network to edge computing resources near the network edge, where computer vision and AI analyse images in real time instead of sending them to a central server. The platform returns prioritised conclusions and alerts to remote pilots and operators in control centres for validation and response.
"Previously, inspecting critical infrastructure — such as a power line, a pipeline or a forested area — involved deploying staff, time and money."
"The 5G network enables a remote connection between the control centre and the location where the drone flight is to take place"
"The drone is not the star of the show; it is the entire ecosystem that makes it possible: 5G, edge computing, computer vision and artificial intelligence, all integrated."
"We don’t send images for someone to review; we send conclusions and alerts."
"We eliminate the pilot’s travel time, which in many cases accounts for 70% or 80% of the total cost of a mission."
"thanks to edge computing, data analysis does not have to travel to a central server; it takes place at the edge of the network, in real time and with minimal latency."
"with high-definition video and AI analysing the images captured by the camera as it flies."
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Scoring methodology
Customer Reference Value measures usefulness as a customer reference. Evidence Confidence measures the quality and traceability of available evidence, not independent verification.
Traceability
Field coverage shows which facts each source supports. Dates are shown only when documented by the source.
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