Drones are really data gathering machines. Here’s how one startup aims to cash in

Drones may still be a bit of a novelty in the skies, but cottage industries are already springing up around expectations that their impact will be enormous.

Fleets of drones are already being used in fields such as law enforcement, agriculture, real estate management and construction. Many other applications are expected to burst forth as standards and regulations take shape.

Companies such as Flyspan Systems Inc. are getting in on the ground floor. The Los Angeles-based startup is developing analytics software that helps owners of drones fleets deploy their airborne devices more efficiently. Now it’s adding image recognition to alert drone owners to problems the machines spot from the sky. Up next: artificial intelligence-driven video recognition.

Flyspan launched in February 2014, just two months after Amazon.com made headlinesby announcing an audacious plan to deliver shipments directly to customers via drones. “That’s when the industry really took off,” said Flyspan Chief Executive Brock Christoval (right).

Christoval and co-founder Vinny Capobianco immediately saw the potential for commercial applications. Drones can easily reach some of the most inhospitable places on the planet, which makes them ideal for tasks like diagnosing problems on oil rigs or gas pipelines and checking cell phone towers.

Drones are data capture machines. They can stream sensor data and video feeds to central monitoring facilities for instant analysis. That’s where Flyspan fits in. It’s building a platform to capture live data from drone fleets and massage it into information its customers can use to optimize efficiency and spot problems. Its secret sauce is software that harmonizes video and data streams to enable decision-makers to precisely pinpoint the location and time of the drone fly-over.

“We let pilots do the job of flying drones so the decision-makers can sit in an office and make informed decision,” Christoval said.

The challenge is separating the wheat from the chaff. Drones deliver a lot of data, but not all of it is important to every customer or application.