Innovation

Focusing on Daily Innovation

This strategy is reflected in a number of major events organised to unite different players and lay foundations for the future. Examples include Vivatech, the European trade fair for new technologies, the Africarena Tour – the first startup challenge on the African continent – and the VINCI Energies hackathons set up in various countries.

These events have paved the way to collaborations with a number of startups. Omexom now works with Sterblue, a startup that facilitates automatic visual inspection of wind turbines and power grids. Using its overarching technology of drones linked to a monitoring and analysis platform, the team aims to develop a system for detecting corrosion on pylons by examining photos taken by the drones.

Omexom is also working with startup DCbrain on ways to harness artificial intelligence for the power grid of the future. DCbrain has developed a system for displaying, analysing and optimising flows in complex electrical networks. Coupled with Omexom’s expertise in energy infrastructures, DCbrain’s technology opens up great opportunities for boosting efficiency in the grid, especially through the kind of real-time flow arbitrage that is being used on the Smartmagne collective self-consumption project in France.

Omexom companies are also developing other innovations in-house, such as the Nomad Mapping System that offers highly operational topographic surveys in hard-to-access environments. Designed to fit into a backpack, the Nomad Mapping System comprises a GPS, an inertial navigation system containing various ultra-accurate sensors, two laser scanners and five cameras. The data collected is then processed for use in visualisation tools. This innovative system deployed by Omexom can be further replicated and applied to buildings or the industrial sector.