Many companies would keep their assets in outside storage areas. Whether a company has to dynamically determine its need for supplies by keeping track of their stock or geolocating the inventory for a particular project, the company has to carry out periodic inventory for outdoor inventory management.

Unfortunately, traditional inventory management is performed manually, always requires the mobilization of significant materials and human resources, which may even involve stopping on-site activities. The process is therefore prone to accounting errors and it is usually not carried out in real-time. Outdoor inventory management is a costly, time-consuming and tedious task and companies are seeking an alternative solution that inventory could be performed automatically, in real-time and in an efficient, accurate and safe way.

Drone-based Outdoor Inventory Management

UAVs have started playing a critical role in the intelligent automation of outdoor inventory operations and management. They allow carrying out repetitive and dangerous tasks without almost any human intervention or supervision.

Anavision provides a UAV-based system solution that makes use of a scanner installed on a UAV in order to read 2D barcodes, thereby replacing the inventory-taking staff to complete the job with less hassle and time. Each target to be tracked is equipped with 2D barcodes, and the drones will be programmed to independently navigate the spaces, taking photos of the storage area to local, to identify and to count each inventory automatically by AI. It is suitable for large areas or areas that are not easily accessible to humans. The recorded geo-location of each item will be transferred to the GIS visualization platform, providing up-to-date information to the operations team for data review.

2D code on inventory item — Figure 1: Each inventory item to be tracked is equipped with 2D barcodes

Outdoor inventory management — Figure 2: Using drone technology for intelligent outdoor inventory management

Computer vision-based drone inventory solutions dramatically expedite the location of individual pieces of inventory, create quantitative as well as qualitative benefits for inventory counts. It has transformed inventory management by saving inventory counting time – what used to take weeks can now take just a few days while the digital information is more accurate and can benefit the company enormously through better collaboration and communication. Labor, equipment, and management costs are greatly reduced.