Night rounds on industrial sites, substations, landfills and data centres. The platform drives the route by itself, reports deviations to the control room and returns to its charging station.
Metal theft from infrastructure has a particular damage pattern: even a failed attempt causes the full consequential damage. If a cable is cut and left behind, the installation is still down until it has been repaired. At Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national railway, repair costs in a single year added up to around 15 million euros, with just under 11,000 delayed trains as a result.
From this follows something uncomfortable: identifying the offender afterwards is of little use. The only thing that works is noticing the attempt early enough — or not making it attractive in the first place.
The second reason is more prosaic. A night round across an extensive site is not difficult, just long and always the same. That makes it exactly the kind of task that gets thinned out first when staff are short — and whose absence nobody notices until something happens.
The difference from a fixed camera lies not in image quality but in coverage: a moving machine sees behind the building, into the alley between the transformers and along the back of the fence — places that would otherwise each need a mast of their own.
Camera with zoom and lighting that switches on as needed, plus thermal imaging — at night the more reliable signal, because a person stands out against the cold background even when not moving.
Open gates and doors, damaged fences, toppled containers, leaks, fill levels. Much of this is an operational rather than a security matter — and comes as a by-product of the same round.
Because every round captures the same points from the same position, a comparison emerges. A deviation stands out even if nobody knew what to look for.
Legally, a patrolling camera is a video surveillance system — with everything that entails. This is not small print; it is the point where projects of this kind fail if it comes up too late.
What follows is the position in Germany. Other countries have their own rules on video surveillance and employee monitoring; the principle is the same everywhere — settle it before the first machine drives.
In practice this means: route, viewing directions, evaluation logic and retention belong in a works agreement before the first machine drives. We supply the technical details you need for it — the agreement itself is concluded in-house.
In this application the docking station is not an accessory: without it, every round needs someone to fetch the machine and plug it in — which means exactly the staff time that was supposed to be saved.