AI & robotics companies, H3 Dynamics and ELID Technology, have partnered to tie H3 Dynamics’ AI-enabled façade assessments to ELID’s robotic façade repair gondolas. Robotic gondolas operate in tight urban environments where other types of drone may not be able to.
The combined technologies form an end to end automation solution covering both inspection and remediation activities on tall buildings. This increases worker safety, as well as scaling up much needed maintenance in large-scale cities with large amounts of aging structures.
Launched 3 years ago, H3 Dynamics’ H3 Zoom®platform applies AI and workflow automation to help digitize health assessments of various structures and sites, creating a solution aimed at modernizing dangerous façade inspection work.
This year, the city-state Singapore enacted the Periodic Façade Inspection regime, making it compulsory to inspect buildings over 13 meters high and over 20 years of age every 7 years. Anticipating this development, JTC Corporation partnered with H3 Dynamics to develop an all-digital façade inspection solution as part of a national innovation initiative. So far, the AI-enabled solution has been applied to over 900 buildings in Singapore.
In the past, H3 Dynamics relied mainly on drone cameras to feed its cloud-based report generation system with HD and thermal images. However, in the last 2 years, its platform has expanded to “non-drone” data workflows, connecting to body worn cameras, fixed cameras, and various robots, including AXIOBOTS® robotic façade gondolas from ELID.
“H3 Zoom is an agnostic site or asset intelligence platform – we purposely separated our software platform from our hardware developments so that we can open ourselves to new possibilities,” says Shaun Koo, CTO and co-Founder of H3 Dynamics’ H3 Zoom business.
Following recent work with CapitaLand, a South-East Asian real estate company, H3 Dynamics’ H3 Zoom platform’s capabilities have come to include automated repair cost estimates, vendor management and repair project tracking. In addition to this, the platform seamlessly links to third party enterprise software such as SAP’s work order management systems, and has now partnered with HP Enterprise and Oracle to reach even more clients. The company’s system is open, agnostic, and can flow easily from assets anywhere in the field to clients’ operations.
ELID’s AXIOBOTS® robotic gondolas bring façade maintenance automation to the next level: they can paint, grout, clean, check for waterproofing and provide visual inspection. Combining AXIOBOTS® with H3 Zoom AI-enabled platform fully automates the physical inspection and remediation process, linking precise positioning and qualification of defects with automated NDT physical checks and repair.
“Our partnership with ELID exemplifies a powerful end to end innovation, where robots are not just capable of acquiring data, but also execute repair tasks identified by our AI analytics platform. This will make smart cities even smarter – bringing building automation to the next level,” stated Taras Wankewycz, CEO of H3 Dynamics.
H3 Dynamics and ELID are expected to begin trials of the combined solution in Singapore with JTC Corporation and Frasers Property Singapore, as a springboard to other megacities and countries with dense urban city-centers.
