In a first, Japanese firm can fly autonomous drones BVLOS at night

In a first for Japan, renewable energy firm afterFIT has received approval to fly autonomous drones beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) at night. The approval has been granted by the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism.

afterFIT uses drones to conduct inspections at its 1,924KW solar power plant in the Tochigi Prefecture. The drones, however, are operated from the company’s Tokyo headquarters – some 124 miles away.

To enable these BVLOS drone inspections, afterFIT uses a modular system comprising of DJI drones, a low-cost docking station, and drone autonomy specialist FlytBase’s FlytNow Auto software.

Explaining how the missions are conducted, afterFIT says it configures the drone to fly autonomously along a predetermined route scheduled on FlytNow, inspect solar panels, and live-stream infrared video feed and images back to the command center. Each inspection round takes about 20 minutes. Following the data collection, an…