The era of collaboration rather than competition.

Historically, technology and machines, have impacted our way of life significantly ever since the first industrial revolution, when machines replaced human beings for the first time. Since then, every industrial revolution has seen significant change to the way we live, not without voices of concern, but ultimately leading to improved quality of life.

We are now part of the fifth industrial revolution, the focus until now has been on replacing human beings with technological advancements for efficiency gains. But times are changing.

The focus of the fifth industrial revolution is not replacing humans with machines, it is about maximizing the strengths of both. This is the era of synergy; human and machine in collaboration rather than competition, and a new type of teamwork has taken form.

What is Collaborative AI?

The term Collaborative AI realizes this teamwork, AI and humans work together, leveraging each parties’ strength to complete a task. We use the term Collaborative AI at eSmart Systems to describe how AI is utilized in our work flow of inspecting power lines for over 10 years, together with inspectors around the world.

Why would you use AI for grid inspections?

For inspectors, the helping hand of the AI means they can spend more time on high-value tasks that require their expertise and less time on time-consuming tasks like manual processing of thousands of images, which the AI can perform automatically and very quickly. AI also provides objectivity within inspections. The human inspector can get tired and miss things whereas the AI does not get tried.

For example, one inspector can process ~50.000 images per year. One inspection can contain as many as 100.000 images. With AI you can process a lot more images very quickly, with one of our customers for their 3-year inspection program the AI processed over 4.5 million images.

How is Collaborative AI applied to the inspection process?

In our approach the inspectors conduct the inspection of the line at a desk using Grid Vision^® inspection software. The captured data is processed by AI and then an inspector is presented with defect recommendations found by the AI. The inspector validates or invalidates the AI’s suggestions to ensure accuracy and then grades the severity of the defect. Using this approach, the AI learns from the inspector’s feedback and becomes better as a function of time, while it is being trained on grid assets.

Why Collaborative AI?

Our Collaborative AI is purpose built by utility experts and trained on utility assets, creating the best starting point for electric utilities on their AI journey. When applying AI correctly to a virtual inspection program, it can increase the defect detection by 60% and shorten the inspection time by 2/3.

eSmart Systems has innovation at its core, as we strive to deliver the most value to our customers, we are continuously working to learn and improve our work. With the latest trends about Generative AI, we are currently researching the potential of incorporating this technology safely to complement ours, through partnerships with academia and Microsoft.

The role of the AI in virtual inspections is assisting the inspector with time consuming processing and defect detection, a collaboration that will bring value from day one. In line with the fifth industrial revolution, the AI is not there to replace the inspector, it is there to optimize the inspection while maximizing the value of technological advancements and human expertise, in synergy.

If you would like a discussion with our experts on AI or how it can be applied to your inspections, contact us today!

For more insights, listen to our podcast on AI misconceptions.