2022 has been a big year at Sphere Drones and Sphere Group, with the launch of our new product, to new partnerships, and introducing a new member to the Sphere family, and more. Let's look at our 2022 highlights.
Perth office opening
In April, the Sphere Drones Perth team moved into a new office located in East Victoria Park. The office is home to Sphere's WA operations and has improved the presence and reach of our team.
Expanding the Sphere family
Rise Above
Back in March of this year, we acquired Rise Above Custom Drones & Robotics. Rise Above was and continues to be at the forefront of the fast-growing drones and robotics market and has served more than 40,000 customers over 10 years as a leading DJI Authorised Tier 1 distributor.
As a part of the transition plan, Rise Above is now focused on the consumer drone market, while Sphere Drones continues to lead the commercial and enterprise space.
Nero
In September, after years of developing and testing, Sphere Group launched Nero, an aerial-based water sampling solution. We are most excited about the Nero Poli water sampler, which can take four separate samples during a single drone mission with live temperature readings at the sample location.
Nero Poli is compatible with DJI M300 but can also be equipped to many drones in the market with a simple mounting bracket and can take samples up to three metres below the surface at up to 1L per minute.
Building new partnerships
YellowScan
Sphere Drones became the exclusive Australian distributor of YellowScan. YellowScan is a global leader and designer of easy-to-use next generation manned and unmanned LiDAR solutions.
UgCS
We took on a partnership with UgCS in July, adding the company's powerful mission planning software suite and related hardware to Sphere Drones' capability stack.
Nordic Unmanned
Together with RMUS, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Nordic Unmanned to distribute each other's products and drone services across the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Nordic Unmanned was also welcomed as the third member of the Global UAS Alliance. Through the MOU, we have been able to expand our product offerings into global markets, specifically with Nero, our proprietary water sampling solution and Curo, our end-to-end drone management platform.
Sentera
In the latter half of the year, we partnered with Sentera off the back of the Rise Above acquisition earlier in the year. Sentera is a leader in agricultural drone sensors and software aimed at delivering time-sensitive agricultural insights that optimise decisions and improve outcomes.
Our other favourite moments from the year
Automating Sydney Harbour Bridge inspection
We worked with Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW) to produce a roving technology-based solution to autonomously inspect the Sydney Harbour Bridge as a part of an Australian first trial.
After an in-depth consultation involving Transport for New South Wales and our team, the perfect solution was chosen, Skydio 2+ Enterprise powered by Skydio Autonomy Enterprise and Skydio 3D Scan.
Becoming a member of the Robotics Australia Group (RAG)
This year we became a member of the Robotics Australia Group (RAG). The Robotics Australia Group is building a sustainable robotics industry in Australia by supporting the entire robotics ecosystem, from the companies building robots to those researching and developing new robotic technologies, robotics educators and enthusiasts, and the companies looking to adopt robots and robotics-related technologies.
Launching the Global Roving Technology Network
We launched the Global Roving Technology Network (GRTN), an up-to-date database of distributors with access to the latest cutting-edge technology from the roving technologies space across the globe. With the GRTN you can see the global distributors of the leading brands such as, DJI, Flyability, Boston Dynamics, YellowScan.
The release of the Flyability Elios 3
There were also a number of notable moments throughout the year. The first of these was the launch of the Flyability Elios 3 and subsequent visits from the Flyability team to our Sydney and Perth offices.
Spot on tour
The second, is a collection of moments relating to the Boston Dynamics Spot. Earlier in the year Sphere Drones had the Boston Dynamics team visit us to show Spot's many uses cases to a number of our clients.
We worked with Fluke to integrate the Fluke SV600 acoustic imager for live leak detection, a first in Australia. Spot, in partnership with IBM took a trip to the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo for a live display of its abilities over three use cases, gauge reading, leak detection, and thermal inspection.
Spot also took a visit to the inaugural Robotics Australia Group (RAG) Chapter event hosted in Sydney by Laing O'Rourke.