Drones are Using QR Codes for Automated Inventory Counts

If you've been watching the recent developments in drone technology, it's become clear that autonomous flying assistants are being adopted in an expanding number of industries. They deliver food, fly security circuits, and even support EMTs with mounted defibrillator units. After several ringing successes, it's only natural that other industries will be experimenting to find where drones can fit into their business practices as well. Finally, one auditing company on the cutting edge of technology is bringing the speed and convenience of drones to inventory tracking with the help of AI, machine learning, and QR code scanning.

AI Enabled Drones

The original iterations of quadcopter hovering drones were more like toy helicopters than automated employees, requiring a nearby human with a remote. However, in the past two years, they have been equipped with a combination of intelligence and sensors that enable the drones to move on their own, identifying both goals and obstacles in order to perform complex industry tasks. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has further expanded their capabilities, making them able to learn and develop more complex and adaptive strategies to perform their assigned tasks. Drones with machine learning AI can, for example, learn the layout of your facilities, identify employees, and intelligently respond to potential collision risks or requests for new tasks to be performed.

EY Brings the Drones

EY Assurance, a globally successful auditing company, has been working on drone technology for several months, dedicated to the idea of bringing down the time employees have to spend counting boxes. Their goal is to free up employee time to do more creative and important tasks like identifying risk areas and improving their inventory methods. Each of their AI assisted drones is connected to a cloud-based asset tracking platform and is equipped with a small array of sensors that allow it to detect, identify, and log every item in your inventory.

They can do this by flying up and down your rows of inventory shelves and scanning the QR codes on items and rack labels in order to gain an accurate count of what is sitting in your warehouse or manufacturing plant. this information is then fed into your version of EY Canvas, a digital auditing platform that is currently in use by over 80,000 auditors across the globe.

From Testing to Implementation

EY has been testing their inventory drones for several months. With overwhelmingly positive results, they have recently decided to take their testing worldwide and into multiple sectors to see how many types of auditing can benefit from these QR code scanning drones. While commercial release is still somewhere in the future, this expansion in testing is already putting drones into more of EY's global facilities and is a good sign for increasing availability. Preliminary tests have been found to be a compelling argument for increased usage and we have every reason to believe that EY will be releasing their innovative inventory drones to the general business world within the next few years if not sooner.

As developments in drone technology make these zippy little robots more and more capable of industry tasks, their human counterparts can be freed from monotonous but unavoidable assignments. With drone inventory counting, you will no longer have to cut into overtime or spend late nights counting inventory in order to reach an auditing deadline. These intelligent inventory drones are, in fact, intended to be used at night to ensure that inventory is always up-to-date each morning and can even double as warehouse security by capturing late night movements during their QR scanning rounds. And, of course, EY gets their cut because anyone who wants an inventory drone would be well-served by switching over to their proprietary auditing platform. Whether you're a current EY customers or just excited about drones, this new innovation has a huge potential to cut long, boring hours counting boxes for any company in the world with a physical inventory. For more news on innovations in QR technology, contact us today!