Linebird founder Michael Beiro has taken another step in ensuring the safety of electrical line workers with the launch company's first complete drone-based payload system.
Founded by Beiro in 2018, Linebird builds specialized payloads, tools and sensors that allows work on live power lines to be done using drones. The startup announced on Tuesday the launch of its Osprey Nonconductive Payload System, known as Osprey NPS. Beiro said the new drone technology is supported by SensorLink Corporation, Linebird’s lead investor, and will make live-line work safer, more time efficient and more accessible by leveraging the use of unmanned aerial systems.
"It's a big moment for us," he said. "This is the payload system that hangs under the drone with the right heavy-lift capacity to bring other tools and transmissions into contact with live power lines for inspection."
The system provides a way for trained line crews to perform splice and dead-end connector inspections using SensorLink's Ohmstik equipment while keeping themselves out of harm's way.
"As power systems age, failures will increase," Beiro said. "Our goal is to solve this problem by providing safe, practical and cost-effective means for assessing the health of critical power grid infrastructure in an entirely new way.”
He said the team has worked over the last 18 months to get Linebird to this point. Osprey NPS will be showcased at the AUVI Xponential conference in Atlanta through tomorrow, Utility Expo in Louisville, Kentucky next month and the Energy Drone and Robotics Summit in Houston, Texas in October.
"Eighteen months ago, we were in early 2020, and at that point we’d done our first high-voltage lab testing of our very first iteration and were gearing up to arrange to test it out in the real world," Beiro said. "From then to now, as a solid company exhibiting our first trade show with a product that can be quoted and marketed and sold, it’s been incredible to see the progress the team has made."
Beiro said Linebird is talking with several utility companies from across the country to give them a deeper understanding of the company and its product. He said the hope is to be able to market Osprey NPS to not only utility companies, but also cooperatives and other service providers like municipalities and the contractors they utilize.
Additionally, Beiro said the company has plans to expand its system's drone compatibility.
"In conversation with many different drone manufacturers, we've validated that the system works with three heavy lifter (drones)," he said. "We want to expand that list so potential customers can see a drone they already have or are planning to acquire and give them seamless integration with their fleet."
