Sunday, November 10, 2013

Balfour Beatty Wants the Robopocalypse

(this is probably the video he's talking about)
Engineering and construction giant Balfour Beatty has revealed that it is interested in using drones to inspect motorways and possibly even build walls.

Balfour Beatty CIO Danny Reeves told Techworld at the Fujitsu Forum yesterday: “We have guys that have to work on the motorways in the central reservations. It’s inherently dangerous work and people do get hurt. If we could chuck up a drone and it could scan a whole central reservation and no one has to cross a road or park a van on a hard shoulder that would be great.”

Technologies such as automated vehicles, which are more commonly used by the military for surveillance and missile strikes, could bring speed, efficiency and safety to Balfour Beatty, said Reeves.

Reeves, who has been CIO at the £12 billion turnover company since 2010, said he has even seen a video of drones building walls. “They just fly around and build a wall,” he said. “That takes a lot of the human error and human safety issues out. Those are technologies we’re quite keen to get an understanding of."

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