Bentley Acceleration Initiatives has announced the availability of OpenTower iQ, a digital twin solution powered by iTwin for telecom towers that provides 3D visualization, real-time decision support, and predictive design from the ground up.
OpenTower iQ is the result of a digital co-venture between Bentley and Visual Intelligence, a Houston, Texas-based sensor technology company, and Aeroprotechnik, an aerial inspection engineering company based in Viseu, Portugal, a release said.
Bentley Acceleration Initiatives is Bentley Systems’ strategic investment fund and incubator initiative. Its objective is to bring together ecosystem partners in a digital co-ventures to accelerate the go-to-market of creative cloud solutions based on the Bentley iTwin platform.
As the demand for data continues to grow, tower companies and engineering firms are looking for all-inclusive, engineering-grade solutions to co-locate, modify, and maintain telecom infrastructure for the 5G rollout.
OpenTower iQ makes it easy to modify existing towers and maintain accurate models, automating the repetitive work of producing as-built models and using artificial intelligence to detect critical components.
Tower companies can use OpenTower iQ to monitor the health of their towers and gain access to shared, secured data through an easy-to-understand portal. Data analytics provide cost benefit analysis to boost operational efficiency and revenue assurance.
Improved accuracy of tower inspections and smart inventory management saves time, cost, and improves safety. OpenTower iQ is designed to handle the large asset portfolios of operators, easily processing and analyzing tens of thousands of towers, the release added.
Combines artificial intelligence and patented drone technologies
To accelerate the launch of OpenTower iQ, Bentley Acceleration Initiatives acquired digital twin technology from Aeroprotechnik, a leading aerial inspection engineering company that specialises in automated asset data capture and digitalisation solutions.
The technology included artificial intelligence and reality modeling capabilities that provide detailed information on current site conditions, which helps tower companies speed up rollouts, enhance decision-making, and shorten sales cycles.
Bentley Acceleration Initiatives also partnered with Visual Intelligence whose patented dual-sensor drone technology digitalises physical infrastructure with millimeter accuracy to reliably deliver 3D, engineering-grade asset intelligence.
“The objective of Bentley Acceleration Initiatives is to incubate new businesses and augment existing ones using Bentley iTwin technologies,” said Bentley Acceleration Initiatives senior vice president, chief acceleration officer Santanu Das.
“Our next step is to invite additional interested ecosystem partners to kick start new digital integrator services to capture huge emerging opportunities for enterprise integration and implementation for towers,” he added.
The telecom industry is going through a rapid transformation as multinetwork operators are expanding their portfolios through consolidation and moving from a 4G platform to 5G.
“OpenTower iQ for tower planning and management is a game changer for the telecom market. Within a couple of days, we had a high-quality reality model available with the reports and other aspects of the projects,” said Genesys International vice president, telecom and utilities, Nikhil Jani.
“Until now, drone data has failed to live up to its promise to the tower industry. This is largely because survey-grade drone sensors can’t collect the fidelity of data required to extract engineering-grade tower intelligence. Our patented drone sensor technology is the first of its kind to collect millimeter-class tower information,” said Visual Intelligence founder and chairman Ted Miller.
