GRAND FORKS, North Dakota — Thread, the leader of enterprise-scale asset maintenance technology for energy and utilities, showcases its latest artificial intelligence (AI) driven predictive data collection technology, built using Microsoft Project AirSim.
Courtesy of the 2022 Federal Inflation Reduction Act, an unprecedented $250 billion investment will upgrade the nation’s electric grid with environmentally friendly renewable energy production, new transmission infrastructure, and smart-grid technology. Now more so than ever, innovative approaches to scalable asset maintenance are needed to digitally transform the energy and utility sectors.
Uniquely positioned by way of deep industry partnerships, Thread delivers a critical enterprise technology solution for those in the renewable energy sector seeking to streamline asset management strategies, transform critical infrastructure maintenance lifecycles, and build a sustainable future.
Thread’s cloud-based platform, UNITI, combined with autonomous data collection capabilities, enable frontline workers – not professional pilots – to proactively collaborate with engineers and managers (often hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from remote renewable energy sites), maintaining vital assets with unprecedented effectiveness. Thread’s innovative approach to maintenance and frontline worker data collection can be extended to any asset in any industry, enabling novel and automated end-to-end workflows.
Thread uses Microsoft Project AirSim, a platform to safely build, train, and test autonomous agents, like drones, aircrafts or robots through simulation. AI is at the heart of building autonomy. Project AirSim helps democratize and accelerate aerial autonomy – namely, the ability to accurately simulate the real world, capture and process massive amounts of data, safely build & execute missions and enable autonomy without the need for deep expertise in AI.
“Every AI-powered data collection routine is developed and tested countless times in simulated environments as operating near critical energy infrastructure isn’t feasible. We often speak of the remarkable capabilities of AI, yet seldom mentioned is the vital need for consistent, reliable, prescriptive data collection, especially in the real world. Because if AI is the key to building autonomy, data is the key to building AI – data that is impossible to obtain in the real world,” explains Thread Founder and CEO Dr. Joshua Riedy.
About Thread: Thread, formerly Airtonomy, is the leading data solution for enterprises looking to streamline and transform critical infrastructure lifecycle management. Leveraging its proprietary, data-driven, and robust platform technology, Thread embeds unmanned aerial systems and robotics with a suite of applications to automate Enterprise inspection workflows and to create the first inspection based digital asset catalog. Digital asset information becomes far more valuable to many stakeholders within the enterprise while also being easier and more efficient to maintain up-to-date information.
