Drone Dock Trailers and the Case for a One-Person Control Room

A year and a half ago, Jared Westrem started working with drone dock platforms, and hardly anyone cared. He says the idea "didn't really make sense" to most people back then. At Geo Week in Colorado last week, it was what everyone wanted to talk about.

This short host-only episode of Tap Into Data sits between guest conversations. Jared and Adam Chartrand pour a whiskey, look back on the show's first episode, and spend most of their time on what comes next: drone-in-a-box systems on trailers, and what they could mean for remote inspection work.

From one pilot trailer to a second

Jared's team has finished one dock trailer deployment, run as a pilot project. A second trailer was due in the shop the day after recording. Interest is growing across several industries, including construction, utilities, and mining, all of them looking at remote operations and consistent monitoring.

What changed, in Jared's view, is the technology. Mobile deployments and standalone systems have matured, and some fairly large players now see docks as a way to grow capacity by adding hardware rather than headcount. They can keep a small, close-knit team of specialized operators and still cover more ground.

He plans to tell the full story on the next episode: what efficiencies they're actually seeing from dock use, and how the setup works. He also admits that topic alone could fill three and a half hours, "but no one wants to listen to Jared talk for three and a half hours."

The questions buyers are actually asking

Adam brings the questions he's hearing from contacts in Atlantic Canada, some of whom he introduced to Jared at Geo Week. They're practical:

• Can these systems get into Canada?
• What does it take to outfit one?
• How many do you need to cover a given geographic territory?

Those questions come straight from how inspection works today. Adam describes crews of pilots in the field 8 to 10 hours a day, then heading back to their accommodations to upload and transfer data and review it by hand.

One operator, many docks

The alternative Adam sketches goes like this. Leave the hardware in the field, power it with renewable energy and a backup system, and have one person in a control center run a series of docks. The docks fly when needed, rather than a crew working through a scope of work on a fixed schedule.

That takes a handful of people out of the field and puts one person in a controlled environment. The hosts don't get into the health and safety side in this episode, but it's clearly part of the appeal. Adam's point is that with the right automated systems and tools, you can get to a far more efficient execution plan.

The open question, and the one his contacts keep asking, is how many docks one operator can realistically handle. The hosts don't answer it here. That's the conversation they're setting up for next week, and they hope to bring the Atlantic Canada group on once their systems are up and running.

Mining is next on the list

Adam is heading to PDAC in Toronto, which he describes as the world's largest mining convention, with roughly 25,000 people expected. Mining is a new industry for him, so he's doing his homework first.

The timing makes sense. With the investment going into Canada right now, mining is one of the main areas getting funding. Just before recording, Adam heard that Ontario is expected to be the most heavily funded location in the world over the next couple of years. He'll report back on how mining organizations are collecting, analyzing, and using their data.

It also fits Jared's dock work. Mining sites tend to be remote and hard to staff, the same conditions where sending people out keeps getting harder.

On big trade shows, Jared has a simple rule: "it's either, you know, just like a normal meet and greet kind of conference or it's bananas." The two of them have been to plenty of the second kind.

The happy hour part

It's a happy hour podcast, and this episode shows it. Jared's youngest daughter is turning one, and he has a trip to North Carolina coming up. The hosts float recording on site at a brewery they've visited in Atlantic Canada, or tour the Twin Cities breweries once the Minnesota weather turns, and they plan to start wearing the brewery T-shirts they've collected along the way.

They also trade a few jabs over hockey. Adam, in Ontario, says Jared isn't welcome north of the border until the gold medal comes back. Jared answers with a claim about Minnesota's hockey talent that won't win him any friends in Canada.

They also say last week's guest will be back, possibly in person at Clean Power in June, because 25 minutes wasn't enough to cover everything he's working on.

Press play to hear the full conversation, and stick around for the dock deep dive in the next episode.

Key takeaways

• Interest in drone docks has moved from almost nothing to the main topic at Geo Week in about a year and a half, as mobile and standalone deployments have matured.
• Dock trailers let organizations add capacity with hardware while keeping a small, specialized team of operators.
• Today's model of pilots in the field 8 to 10 hours a day, then uploading and reviewing data manually, is what remote operations aims to replace.
• The target setup is field hardware on renewable power with backup, run on an as-needed basis by one operator in a control center.
• Canadian mining is drawing heavy investment, and Adam is heading to PDAC in Toronto to see how mining organizations use their data.