TCS opens drone facility in the US

Tata Consultancy Services said it has opened its first research lab for drones in the US at its Seven Hills Park Innovation Center located in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The lab will address the rapidly expanding demand for unmanned aerial vehicles and business Solutions across industries, the Indian IT major said.

The facility will feature indoor labs, a showcase, a warehouse, and outdoor terrain footprints.

The fully operational lab is demonstrating solutions for insurance, manufacturing, logistics, and transportation industries, as well as specific environmental applications.
TCS, the company said.

“It provides a rapid experimentation and co-innovation environment for customers to build solutions for specific industry problems in accelerated 30-60-90-day delivery cycles,” the company said.

Drones are being increasingly used in the field of surveillance, security, logistics, entertainment, mining and several other areas.

As a technology partner, TCS can be often called upon to provide expertise on deploying such solutions in an industrial context.

The company said the US Federal Aviation Administration certified its pilots based at the Lab to fly fully equipped drones to collect data for specific industry use cases.

“Advanced computer vision, machine learning and deep learning algorithms enable fully automated processing of the drone captured images to reveal precise insight,” it said.

“Forward-thinking companies worldwide are at different stages of exploring drone technology to reimagine existing operational processes and transform the way they do business,” said K. Ananth Krishnan, EVP and Chief Technology Officer at TCS.

“The Drones Research Lab combines the latest in drone technology with cutting edge research from our labs, and enables our Customers to rapidly build innovative solutions.”

Seven Hills Park was established in 2008 as TCS largest and first North American digital center for advanced technologies to provide services and solutions to address local customers’ business challenges.

With more than 1,000 employees, Seven Hills Park offers digital technologies to decrease time to market, integrate business Solutions, manage data privacy, address the consumerization of IT, and adopt advanced software development methodologies like Agile and Rapid Prototyping, the company said.

The campus is located on 223 acres of wooded land and features advanced workspaces and multipleredundant business continuity features, it added.

The company is currently engaged in boosting its hiring in the US after the new administration under President Donald Trump started turning the screws on companies that relied excessively on workers brought in from outside the US.

TCS is one of the biggest users of imported labor, particularly from its homeland India, to carry out contacted work at factories and offices of its clients in the US.