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Plan on Safety
Ensure Efficiency
Cell Tower Inspection
As enterprises leverage UAS to complete tasks currently done by humans, they must address a number of operational challenges and adjust underlying business processes to accommodate a collaborative environment between humans, robots and IT systems. In addition, they must determine what business value can be derived from automated data gathering, which tasks can be both electronically and mechanically automated in a workflow, and what intelligence can be obtained from data gathered.
High Voltage Power Lines
High voltage lines are electrical lines that distribute power at high voltages. The maintenance of these lines is a risky job, which requires careful attention and caution. Power line maintenance involves examining the pylons, inspecting their insulators and detecting thermographic problems.
Inspection is currently performed from the ground or by helicopter. The difference is that line inspectors who work from the ground are required to climb posts to access the lines whilst inspectors using helicopters do not. Inspection with helicopters is much more expensive and sometimes timeous enough to avoid pending disruptions.
Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) provide a safe, cheap and easily deployable alternative to traditional methods. UAS carry cameras that produce high resolution images as well as thermal images, are equipped with transmitters enabling sharing of the live footage, are easy to deploy and can fly to within a couple of metres of the lines.
UAS aided inspections can improve the quality and safety of inspection, increase the frequency of inspection and reduce the costs of inspection all in one go.
Infrastructure
Key infrastructures are like the veins of our society and include technical structures such as roads, bridges, waterways, airports and railroads. The maintenance of these structures is costly, yet indispensable for the proper functioning of modern economies.
A major difficulty for maintenance and inspection services is the vast surface some structures cover. To perform proper maintenance the structures need to be closely inspected; however physical inspection of each part requires a significant amount of time.
An efficient alternative to physical inspection is inspection with unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). These systems can carry various cameras for day and night inspection, can be equipped with additional sensors such as sniffers, and are programmable to fly specific routes regularly. UAS can inspect larger areas, in different ways, in less time and at lower costs. In addition, the more frequent regular inspections facilitate faster problem recognition, resulting in fewer negative externalities.
Wind Turbines
The increasing focus on renewable resources has fuelled governments worldwide to invest in wind energy. As a result, the number of wind turbines has grown exponentially over the last few years. Yet, while the number of turbines grew, so too has the need for cheaper and safer inspection methods.
With Verstaad Drone Systems’s commercial drone solutions, companies can ensure compliance, enhance worker safety, and capture more accurate, repeatable data to improve decision-making. Here’s how companies use Verstaad Drone Systems to integrate aerial data into their existing business process.
Pipeline Surveillance
In the Energy industry, one critical function is asset management and monitoring to assess production performance, environmental and safety compliance, overall integrity and other factors. While the needs are straightforward, the complexities, risks and scale involved are immense: pipelines span thousands of miles, manufacturing facilities offer potential exposure to hazardous chemicals, and production platforms are often remote; for example, in deep water and arctic environments. Maintenance, integrity and surveillance activities are costly to plan and execute, and must be done routinely to avoid leaks, production outages and unplanned shutdowns.
UAS offer an attractive complement to conventional approaches of facility management, there are even greater untapped opportunities for cost savings through activities such as automated data gathering, automated maintenance, integrity and surveillance workflow, and data analysis to generate predictive insights on facilities. These insights can be used to drive operational decisions and improve business processes, such as shortening lead time to problem detection or predictive maintenance in industries with field force operations.
Traffic Monitoring
Traffic monitoring is performed to collect data that describes the use and performance of the road networks. Traffic data is typically used to support performance, safety and maintenance of roads. The traffic data can be collected in two main ways: automatically using electronic equipment that is set to monitor certain roads at specific times or manually by visually observing cases.
Common types of traffic monitors are cameras that are fixed above the roads or helicopters. The disadvantage to these common measures is that they can only serve one particular purpose. The cameras cannot be moved around efficiently, whilst the helicopter is too expensive to use for repetitive monitoring.
