The use of drones for event security is increasing in popularity due to the ability to provide live, aerial views to monitor and avoid potentially dangerous crowd situations. During the recent festival of La Virgen del Pilar in Zaragoza, Spain, VERSES Technologies, a contextual computing platform provider offering next-gen AI solutions, was able to complete its Autonomous Drone or Urban Air Mobility (UAM) test for its COSM artificial intelligence operating system, geospatial digital infrastructure, and drone mobility portal.
For the event, it deployed multiple autonomous drones to monitor the safety of thousands of visitors to the event. Local authorities monitored the happenings during the celebration and surrounding neighborhoods thanks to the drone footage.
“The collaboration with VERSES and Flying Forward 2020 made it possible for autonomous drones to operate safely over the crowds, collect images of key areas of the festival and provide essential data to our first responder teams on the ground,” said Miguel Ángel Ania, Head of Innovation for the city of Zaragoza. “This information not only provided a real-time view of the city but will help with future event planning.”
Drone surveillance offers may strategic benefits, including the ability to create and adjust evacuation routes to prevent crowd surges, determine the easiest and safest access points for emergency personnel, constantly observe crowds for safety, understand traffic flows and points of congestion, and more.
The work was part of Flying Forward 2020, a European Commission-funded special research and innovation project. Together with the Zaragoza City Council it also governed the behavior of the autonomous drones so strict compliance with air traffic regulations and data privacy laws were also met.
“This was an exciting project for VERSES, and we appreciate the collaboration from the city of Zaragoza as we developed and delivered an urban air mobility plan for the Pilar Festival,” said Gabriel René, Founder, and CEO of VERSES.
“This autonomous drone work is another example of our COSM operating system in action. From the spatial mapping of an entire city to the creation of flight plans and the governance of drones via geospatial contracts in real time – this is all possible because of the adaptive intelligence capabilities that are unique to our COSM platform.”
The company said it will continue its work with the Flying Forward 2020 project to operate autonomous drone flights for Beyond the Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS).