Antwerp uses autonomous 5G drone network for port inspection

The Antwerp port area has started deploying a network of six drones, controlled remotely via a 5G connection. These autonomous drones should assist with port inspection by providing a live feed of the environment.

The area that these automated drones must inspect covers a total of more than 120 km². The drones make flights eighteen times a day from their base stations, which are located in various places around the port. They are used, among other things, for ‘berth management, monitoring, infrastructure inspections, oil slick and floating dirt detection and to support safety partners in the event of incidents’. writes Port of Antwerp-Bruges.

This so-called D-Hive network should strengthen the port’s digital twin. Security cameras and sensors were already used to build that real-time digital copy. The CEO of the Port of Antwerp-Bruges says that the drone network should ‘help with more efficient management of our port and even safer and smoother traffic’.

According to the port, this network is a ‘world first’ because it is the first implementation of drone flights outside the visual line of sight of the pilot ‘in a complex industrial environment’. The flights are managed and controlled from the central command center in the port. The latter is done via a 5G connection, which is provided by Proximus. For the drones themselves, we collaborate with DroneMatrix and SkeyDrone.

The central command center from which the drone flights are managed and controlled.