Case Study: DroneWorks achieves secure, scalable predictive maintenance for industrial drones with Microsoft Azure

Developers help build a safe, standardized flight platform for industrial drones with Azure IoT Hub

DroneWorks, a small Chiba-based company in Japan, set out to build a standardized industrial drone management system that predicts maintenance needs and prevents malfunctions across mixed-vendor hardware. The challenge was to securely and efficiently collect high-volume flight data (from dozens of sensors) on a Linux-based stack, minimize telecom costs through edge processing, and ensure safe communication between flight controllers, sensors, and cloud services.

The team implemented a gateway-based architecture using Azure IoT Edge and Azure IoT Hub—receiving sensor data via UDP at the edge, performing preprocessing, then forwarding messages to the cloud over AMQP. Azure Stream Analytics and Power BI provide real-time analysis and visualization, with Azure Table storage for scalable retention; a Raspberry Pi prototype validated the approach. The solution delivered a secure, scalable data pipeline and a foundation for Azure Machine Learning–driven predictive maintenance, helping DroneWorks advance a safe, standardized drone platform.

DroneWorks

Hironobu Imamura

Chief Executive Officer