NEWS
Enel selects Percepto’s
Sparrow drone for use at
power plant
Open Fiber
chooses Italtel
for network
automation
I
taltel, alongside Maticmind, has
announced that it has completed a
pioneering network automation project to
automatically configure network services for
Open Fiber, the wholesale-only FTTH Italian
operator, which expects to reach around
19 million property units in Italy with FTTH
ultra-broadband in the upcoming years.
P
ercepto, developers of on-site
autonomous drone systems, has
announced that Enel, a multinational
power company and a leading integrated
player in the global, power, gas and
renewables markets, has completed
deployment of Percepto’s Sparrow drone
system for use at its Torrevaldaliga Nord
power plant in Italy. The multipurpose
drone platform will support operation and
maintenance activities at the site.
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When flying autonomously, Sparrow
conducts inspection missions without any
human intervention.
Percepto’s drone-in-a-box solution
makes aerial missions easier to conduct,
increasing flight frequency and the
probability of anomaly detection at an
early stage. Once an anomaly is detected,
the drone sends out an alert in real-time,
describing the nature of the problem and
reporting its location.
At Enel’s power plant, Sparrow will fly in
automated mode, under the supervision
of an operator who can take control of
the device at any moment as Italy’s
regulatory framework does not currently
allow fully autonomous drone flight. Sparrow’s ongoing data collection
and analysis enables preventative
maintenance, ultimately leading to
a reduction in operational costs and
improved site productivity.
Powered by computer vision and
AI technology, the drone carries a
permanent dual payload of day and
night-vision (thermal) cameras enabling
around-the-clock operations, including
the collection of aerial video, snapshots
and data that can be transmitted to Enel
personnel in real-time. “While drones are touted as the
technology of the future, the ability to act
autonomously unlocks their true potential,
enabling them to act as a responsible,
independent and smart ‘team member’
that provides not only a bird’s-eye view of
facilities, but real, actionable insights,” said
Dor Abuhasira, CEO of Percepto.
INTELLIGENTCIO
Open Fiber has chosen the innovative
Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO)
platform to automate and simplify its massive
operations and provide services in a faster
and easier way through network automation.
The deployment will allow it to add, modify
and delete services automatically without
interrupting the overall service and will
guarantee real-time activation.
Italtel, which was the first company in Italy
to be certified on Cisco NSO technology,
designed Open Fiber IP Backbone and has
been playing an essential role in analysing
Open Fiber’s needs, designing network
services and the related automation
leveraging on the programmable Cisco
NSO platform. The platform operates on all
network layers, ranging from access to IP
and optical transport one.
“Open Fiber is now able to deliver wholesale
services on a very large scale, significantly
reducing the time-to-market of new
services and minimising the configuration
errors,” said Domenico Angotti, Head of
Engineering at Open Fiber. “Cisco’s Network
Orchestrator greatly supports us for the end-
to-end operation of the equipment and the
supervision of the activation cycles, allowing
to mainly focus our efforts on developing
innovative customer services, thus increasing
efficiency and reducing complexity and
operating costs.”
www.intelligentcio.com