[Moriyama Wind "Border between Humans and Machinery"] Sony+ZMP Aerosense Co., Ltd. takeoff -How far can it bite into the market with a flying robot -PC Watch

　Sony Mobile Communications Co., Ltd. and ZMP, a robot venture, announced that it would launch a drone business for industrial use to establish "Aerosense Co., Ltd.", and held a press conference on August 24.There are many reports from the perspective of "Sony" and "Sony's technology", but only in the joint venture with ZMP, the share ratio is 50 Sony Mobile Communications..005%, ZMP 49.It is 995%.

　The representative director is Tsune Taniguchi of ZMP.Kotaro Sabe of CTO has been involved in the development of Pet robot "AIBO" in Sony, and a small humanoid "QRIO", which was once a corporate ambassador.During the Sony Intelligence Dynamics Research Institute, he has also appeared in photos of the past article in this series.At the conference venue, I saw a face after a long absence for the writer who had covered robots so far.

　The robot peaked in the Aichi Expo in 2005, and is now coming to a boom again after a slightly downturn.In the past, the world was developing unprecedented household robots, but Sony, which stopped all in 2006 and withdrawn, and after founding in 2001, we first developed home robots, but automatic driving technology, etc.I am impressed by the fact that both venture ZMP, who have found a way to find out, created one company with a drone, a flying robot, a flying robot.

　ZMP has established a "robot taxi Co., Ltd." with a joint venture with DeNA, and has received an autonomous driving car equipped with an open source automatic driving software "Autoware" by Nagoya University.He has launched it as soon as he started and studied image recognition technology using deep learning in cooperation with the GPU NVIDIA.In addition, the bogie robot "Carriro" for the logistics field has begun to take the order of robot technologies that have been cultivated so far, such as starting orders.

　Robot technology is a highly versatile technology.Whether it can be used depends on the combination.And there is another know -how to develop as a business.In any case, it should be evaluated that the accumulation so far has begun to open.

　By the way, the aerosense business has already been reported on each media, but in this paper, I would like to introduce it again with some trends in drone business and technology development.Recently, drones for hobby use have become strictly regulated, but in Tokyo, unless they are large private lands, they can not fly in most places.Many drones are used as aerial photography camera, and although it requires some advanced know -how in order to take proper images, as drones become common, the shooting business is appealing alone.It is becoming less difficult.On the other hand, civil engineering, inspections and other drone businesses have just begun, and there is a lot of pioneering.

　The aero -Sense business model is to provide corporate solutions such as 2D or 3D data by combining drones that fly completely autonomously with image processing and management technology in the cloud.Rather than remotely manipulation, it aims to create a system that automatically generates a path with one button, drones fly, measure shooting, and return.Data is managed and processed in the cloud.The business area is architectural and inspection, civil engineering and mining, monitoring and security, agriculture, logistics and transportation.

　However, the current status and automatic surveying solution itself using drones, one of the examples introduced by the company, are not new, and rival companies are already ahead.For example, in the International Drone Exhibition held this year, Komatsu also has a SKY CATCH drone and cloud platform as part of the “Smart Construction” that connects ICT construction machinery, drawings and construction data from February 2015.It was appealing an automatic surveying solution using "KomConnect".Komatsu also invested in ZMP in February this year.The goal is to be unmanned and automatic driving of construction and mining machinery.

　I don't know if the Sky Catch drone can be replaced with a drone of aerosense.However, no matter what you do with a drone, it is only a part of the civil engineering / construction site, so it is an issue how far you can bite.Whether the business succeeds depends on the ease of use, the interface, and the sales capabilities after becoming part of the total solution.At the conference, the details of that area were not mentioned, but I guess the power of the Sony Mobile or Sony itself will be poured here.It seems that it is not just a narrow sense technical cooperation.

　Aerosense press conference was held in two parts.Regarding the contents of the first part, "AV Watch" and various media are also featured in various media, so please look at them, and here are the contents of the second part.