Hitachi has been awarded a contract to develop Japan’s “Fukushima Robot Test Field” drone flight management system. Under the contract, Unifly and Terra Drone will provide the UAS traffic management (UTM) backbone for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone flights at the test center. The flight management system will monitor and track registered drones in real-time informing the authorities continuously on drone flight activities and flight compliance. The test center’s goal is to further advance BVLOS flights.

Hitachi established a drone service review unit in 2015 to promote research and development on the core technologies, services, and operational methods needed to implement drone services through advanced demonstration experiments with customers in several industries. Simultaneously, the company is expanding its portfolio of services that use artificial intelligence (AI) to process and analyze the data collected by drones. AI and historical data is used to select the locations with the highest potential for materials deterioration and AI-assisted image processing is used to automatically detect materials deterioration and contamination and highlight locations requiring more detailed inspection.

In addition to its proprietary UAS work, Hitachi also provides UAS policy advice through the Japan Unmanned Operation Management Consortium, UAS research at the University of Tokyo, and UAS international standardization activities through ISO.