From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, this is the Real Economy Report.

Sashnee Moodley:

At a recent showcase event hosted at the FNB Stadium, in Gauteng, technology company Dwyka Mining Services and its sister company Deep-Tech introduced several new drone-based solutions to South Africa through their partners. Darren Parker attended the showcase.

Darren Parker:

Dwyka and Deep Tech have jointly announced the launch of several new drone technology services through their partnerships with drone technology companies Wingtra, Emesent and now Skydio.

The newly signed strategic partnership and reseller agreement with Skydio will see one of the largest AI-powered drone technology companies in the US being introduced to the African market for the first time.

Dwyka and Deep-Tech CEO Jamie van Schoor…

Darren Parker:

The Skydio drone technology is based on an onboard NVIDIA Jetson Orin graphics processing unit, which give the drones the capacity to see, understand and react to obstacles in real-time, making them just about impossible to crash.

This advanced spatial AI engine gives Skydio drones complete 360° awareness of their surroundings through the use of up to six custom navigation cameras that eliminate all blindspots. The drones can even operate in no-light environments.

These semi-autonomous drones are ideal for use in complex environments, automatically avoiding even the thinnest obstacles such as cables, so that collisions do not occur.

Dwyka and Deep-Tech CEO Jamie van Schoor…

Darren Parker:

At the event, Dwyka and Deep-Tech also introduced the installation of Australia-based Emesent’s Hovermap LiDAR scanner technology payload on Spot, the semi-autonomous, highly agile robot dog from US-based robotics developer Boston Dynamics.

With the device mounted on Spot, the robot is able to traverse pitch black mining tunnels safely and autonomously, delivering a clear and detailed map of the area upon its return.

Dwyka and Deep-Tech CEO Jamie van Schoor…

Darren Parker:

Also showcased at the event was the new LiDAR payload on the vertical take-off and landing Wingtra drone, enabling the drone to carry out large-scale, highly detailed aerial mapping.

The Wingtra drone can map up to 360 ha at a height of 90 m using the LiDAR payload and Hesai sensor from Inertial Labs.

Dwyka and Deep-Tech CEO Jamie van Schoor…

Sashnee Moodley:

That’s Creamer Media’s Real Economy Report. Join us again next week for more news and insight into South Africa’s real economy. Don’t forget to listen to the audio version of our Engineering News daily email newsletter.