Years of Drone Surveillance: An Earnest Salute from Thailand

As an emerging technology, drones have rapidly evolved since their inception, and have become accessible to private companies since the 2010s, triggering a market with immense potential. Among their end uses, security and surveillance have taken increasingly significant share.

To better understand their use in this area, YANGDA team recently conducted a 5-day installation and feedback visit with a returned customer in Thailand — a defense unit that has been applying VTOL drone for site surveillance for years.

Image: http://www.aletheiasecurity.sg/Solutions-Security-Manpower

Why Opt Out of Traditional Surveillance?

The Thailand team purchased their first security drone from YANGDA in 2022 — exactly when traditional surveillance had gradually revealed its incompetency:

• Manpower limit: Since our early civilization, humans have relied on planned patrolling, regular inspection or occasional defense drills to deploy security strategy. Yet physical limitations—such as fatigue, distraction, or oversight—can reduce surveillance effectiveness, leading to slower responses especially at night.
• Information limit: Fixed cameras are the most common tool in traditional surveillance, performing well in controlled indoor environments where Internet and electricity are available. However, in open areas like mining sites or along coastlines, their limitations—blind spots, imprecise positioning, or attainable but complex multi-camera tracking—become apparent and annoying.
• Budget limit:To address the shortcomings mentioned above, additional investments in security personnel and upgraded filming or communication equipment are needed. Yet this will incur a rather high budget allocation due to future maintenance, staff recruitment and device integration.
  
  

Modern Surveillance: Data-Driven is the New Must

“One key fascination of drone surveillance is its precise data transmission. We deployed our entire response strategy based on its data, and got a huge efficiency improvement”, said the Thai team leader.

Unlike traditional surveillance, drone surveillance integrates monitoring, patrolling, tracking and communication into a powerful system, where data is continuously shared among drones, cameras and ground control stations. Together with the Thai team, we summarized the intelligence of drone surveillance into the following takeaways:

• Safer exploration: Since 2022, The Thai team has applied VTOL drones for long-range surveillance via remote control. Thanks to their ability to take off and land vertically even in challenging terrain, these drones have significantly expanded the surveillance area and enabled the team to explore the known and unknown without exposing staff to potential risks.
  
  

Vertical Landing and Takeoff

• Expanded vision: In addition to fixed cameras, the Thai team applied drone  with a payload camera for regular patrolling. With the support of camera gimbal and built-in EO and IR sensor, they now obtain ultra-clear and omnidirectional vision—even at night.
  
  
  

  
  Payload Camera with 360° Yaw Rotary Gimbal

• Smarter feedback: Precision in drone surveillance relies not only on advanced data-gathering devices, but also on a robust management system — YDLINK software developed by YANGDA. This platform enables real-time patrol data to be shared with ground control stations and even command center computers, allowing the Thai team to quickly identify suspects’ appearances, locations, and activities with the support of AI-powered recognition.
  
  
  

Real-Time and Remote Sharing at Command Center

New technologies are invented and developed not just for positive applications — a random criminal can be an IQ-130+ tech savvy individual too. But he seldom succeeds in exploiting a properly secured area — where smart, efficient and comprehensive drone surveillance is deployed.

Devices Overview

VTOL Drone: YANGDA Sky Whale Electric VTOL Drone

Gimbal Camera: Storm Eye-30IE-M 3KM Laser Rangefinder EO/IR Camera

Datalink: Videopass-N30 Long Range Digital Video And Data Link

Operation Software: YDLINK