LIGHT UP YOUR PROJECTS

WHAT NEW POSSIBILITIES DRONE DATA COLLECTION POWERS FOR SURVEYS, INSPECTIONS, SITE ASSESSMENTS & MORE

A construction business carried out a study to gather topographical information of the challenging terrain in order to assess the appropriateness of a 200-acre site for a number of new buildings. Normally, gathering the data across such a large area would have required several teams and at least a few weeks. Even still, it would have taken more time for them to compile their data for entry into AutoCAD and produce a topographical map with a few thousand points (collected every 25 feet). Inspections, surveys, and other methods of collecting data about the terrain have long been hampered by a lack of automation, scalability, and repeatability. These restrictions not only make these efforts costly, labor- and time-intensive, but they also place restrictions on the types of data collecting that are even possible. These issues are fixed by drones. They acquire more data more quickly and more cheaply (performing in one hour what would take 25 hours manually) (sometimes as much as one-sixth of the cost). They operate under circumstances when manual data collecting would be impossible, unreasonably risky, or both.

Drones can also outperform manual approaches in terms of accuracy rates. That is the present-day potential of drones and airborne data collection. Organizations in almost every industry and market are now able to take advantage of cutting-edge technology to obtain priceless information in novel ways. In fact, drones enable opportunities rather than merely solving problems. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including photogrammetry and cutting-edge LiDAR technology, don't only replace older survey methods exactly. It can inspire creative use cases that were previously unimaginable. Nevertheless, as most industrial applications of drone technology are still in their infancy, most businesses aren't even aware of how much they can accomplish with drones and how much more effectively. Due to skill and technological limitations, those few who have tried a DIY method might not be aware of their full potential. Many organizations have not even started to scratch the surface of the potential. The use of drones will enable the data collection effort to reach hitherto unimaginable levels of performance.

HOW DATA IS COLLECTED

Certain terrestrial surveying equipment can be replaced by drones or unmanned aerial vehicles. Organizations in a variety of industries (see chart on the following page) can use drones for project progress monitoring, site inspection preparation or execution, site assessment, and problem identification. Drones can also be used to collect footage or information for marketing and reporting needs, for conducting research, or for other types of analysis and processing. Drone data collecting actually entails much more than simply flying a drone with a camera and hovering it over the place to take a few pictures. They make use of many technologies to create extraordinarily information-rich databases.

PHOTOGRAMMETRY

LiDAR

The drone can collect high-resolution photos of practically any size region using photogrammetry. These images can then be combined to produce a detailed and information-rich representation of the location or object that is being surveyed or examined.

Instead of concentrating on a single point, photogrammetry uses the overlapping images to produce an intricate 3D map of the entire world. Additionally, photogrammetry gathers texture, shape, and color data for each point on the map in addition to elevation data, resulting in a high-definition 3D reconstruction. For the purpose of taking both 3D and 2D pictures, a photogrammetric drone system is highly helpful. It can map big areas and gather information from many angles. Without sending a human up there, it may approach near and take pictures to inspect something like a cell phone tower.

Light detection and ranging, or LiDAR, has been used for many years. Nonetheless, drones have only recently started using it extensively. A LiDAR sensor, a kind of light-based echolocation device, employs mirrors to project laser pulses in various directions and then calculates the precise time it takes for the beams to return. To calculate the light's intensity, it also employs an algorithm. A LiDAR sensor may offer near-instantaneous, extremely accurate readings of the topography and points on the ground by monitoring the intensity and timing. The procedure, when carried out millions of times, can produce a point cloud that is highly data-rich.

LiDAR can typically create scans with higher resolution and greater accuracy than photogrammetry can. In fact, LiDAR shines in application scenarios where conventional photogrammetry or human operators would fail:

With photogrammetry, operations can:

Capture RGB video

Create a 3D model of the location

Make an orthomosaic (similar to a high- resolution Google earth image)

Examining a landscape covered in trees and other greenery

Searching for tiny, thin, or otherwise difficult to detect objects (like power lines)

Using LiDAR during operations in poor lighting, one can:

Make a topography with one-foot contours that is incredibly accurate so that it can efficiently cut through vegetation to reveal the ground below, which is not achievable with virtually any other method.

Consider the vegetation and assign a high, medium, or poor rating to each region.

DRONES' INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS

Drones can create significant datasets in a large range of applications and use-cases across practically every business that conducts surveys, inspections, and more because of their extreme mobility, flexibility, and variability.

AGRICULTURE

By gathering information about crop and soil conditions, water levels, plant health, and other factors, drones assist farmers, growers, and ranchers in lowering expenses, increasing yields, and better managing both crops and cattle.

TOWERS

Cell phone tower inspections is an important but time- and labor-consuming activity that also puts human workers at risk. Data collection by drones can be done in a fraction of the time while posing no risk to human operators.

ENERGY & SOLAR

In order to evaluate the performance of solar panels, confirm general condition, evaluate environmental effect, and look for right-of-way encroachments, drones can give thermal data in addition to RGB data and aerial imagery.

CONSTRUCTION

For use in site planning, progress monitoring, safety inspections, and even thermal imaging to find issues like electrical hotspots or heat loss, drones may collect practically any type of survey and monitoring data.

EMERGENCY SERVICES

Drones can hasten and simplify emergency response, from assisting in search-and-rescue operations through aerial imagery, thermal imaging, providing surveillance for law enforcement, and more.

OIL & GAS

By employing drones to collect real-time imaging data, it is possible to avoid plant shutdowns, minimize operational delays, identify structural flaws, evaluate performance, and hasten inspections, maintenance, and other tasks.

REAL ESTATE

Ground-level photography is labor- and time-intensive, and it may also miss details that airborne drones can record. Thus, drones make it easier to manage, appraise, and examine real estate.

YOUR INDUSTRY?

Due to the extreme flexibility of drone-based photography and data collecting, use-case scenarios are now possible that would have been impossible or impractical with manual, ground-based, or satellite-based data alone.

WHAT MAKES DRONES DIFFERENT? DATA IS EVERYTHING.

Data gathering is at the core of what drones do, and they outperform traditional and manual data collecting in practically every quantifiable way, including time and speed, cost, personnel, quantity, accuracy, and more. However, the dataset's richness is where the main improvement lies. It is now much simpler to capture a wide range of data points from virtually any location and perspective, including ones that might not be practical when humans are conducting the survey or inspection, thanks to the drone's extreme mobility and automated data collecting. The end result is a data collection that has more details and generates a more thorough and educational image, map, or evaluation.

NEW DATA

More information is produced by drones than is otherwise conceivable. Survey points can be measured in centimeters or millimeters rather than feet or meters. Millions of points in datasets are produced as a result. Additionally, a drone survey will generate a large amount of useful data. For illustration, a single dataset will contain both highways and trees. It contains that information if your initial needs are only to evaluate the vegetation. In that case, you already have the information and don't need to send a second team out to assess the roads. This reduces time- and money-consuming site visits.

MORE RELIABLE DATA

Drone survey points were as accurate as 0.68 cm (0.022 ft) — this is how drones produce so many more points — according to a study published in the Journal of Big Data. Drones were able to attain an accuracy rate of 98.53% at an altitude of 40 m, with only a tiny accuracy drop off even at an altitude of 100 m. In another study, it was discovered that drone data collection in ecology was up to 96% more accurate than conventional ground-based methods, or roughly twice as accurate.ii LiDAR in particular was able to provide point density between 50 and 200 points/m2 even from elevations as high as 2000 m. (6600 ft).

NEW DATA OPPORTUNITIES

These changes not only qualitatively transform what operators can do, they also quantitatively improve the process. They can gather data that might not have been accessible in the past or take on initiatives that would have been impossible due to the sheer amount of data required. Drones can keep an eye on several places at once. They can entirely take over missions that were previously carried out by helicopter. They can produce a historical record that, when combined with recent information or existing site designs, enables businesses to do change analysis and perhaps anticipate future requirements.

DATA COLLECTION BASED ON LIDAR IN PARTICULAR DRIVES OFFERS UNPRECEDENTED POSSIBILITIES

Particularly when it comes to data collecting, LiDAR technology has certain noticeable advantages, including better distance measurement accuracy, the capacity to penetrate ground cover, and the capacity to operate effectively in low light. While photogrammetry can provide a high-resolution image, LiDAR can provide even more precise information, such as the precise location of an object and, possibly, what lies beneath it. As a result, the depth of information provided by LiDAR enables use-cases that aren't feasible with just photogrammetry.

Additionally, DRONES HAVE UNBEATABLE TIME, LABOR, AND COST EFFICIENCIES

Beyond data collection, a drone's main advantage is its ability to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of initiatives. These efficiencies are also essential for creating new avenues for data collection. The versatility of drones extends beyond what they can do technically. They can also make logistically challenging tasks that would otherwise be too expensive, time-consuming, or labor-intensive possible.

SAVING TIME

Drones capture more pictures per second than human operators generally can in a minute, allowing them to collect data more quickly. Additionally, they have the capacity to simultaneously gather a variety of data kinds and, in some cases, data pertaining to various land parcels. (especially from higher altitudes). For instance, drone footage can cut the time it takes to clean a golf course by 96% because it can quickly discover problems like fungal outbreaks and water leaks that are difficult to spot from the ground.iii Similarly, it might take a professional about 25 hours to inspect 1MW of solar on foot. Thus, it would take 125 man hours to inspect a tiny 5MW solar farm while it could be done in a few hours by drone.

DRONES ARE ALSO SAFER

SAVINGS ON LABOR

In some situations, the labor decrease can be significant. You can cut the amount of labor needed by 50% to 80% if you don't have to send a worker (or a team of workers, or multiple teams) to manually collect data over a significant area of land or up a tall height like a cell phone tower. Thus, photogrammetry and LIDAR both provide a way to quickly gather the data needed with fewer crew members or as a way to augment the crew already present.

Workers must put themselves in risky situations for many surveys, inspections, and other data collection tasks. Inspecting a cell phone tower would put the worker at risk of falling from a height. Conducting railway inspections that require people to cross rails could put them in danger. Finding a methane leak could expose the worker to hazardous substances. Drones eliminate the need to put people in potentially dangerous circumstances, while most drones themselves avoid getting in the way of moving machinery and automobiles.

SAVINGS ON COSTS

Drone data gathering is consistently less expensive than manual options due to the clear correlation between labor and time savings. Drones were shown to be 40% less expensive than manual solar inspections in a series of trials, according to Power Engineering.iv Similarly, The New York Power Authority and Ontario Power Generation employed drones to monitor an ice boom between the Niagara River and Lake Eerie. A damaged wire was located by the drone in about 20 minutes. According to their team, drones allowed for a 90% reduction in inspection costs.

Drones alone are insufficient.

Yet, a word of caution: how the drone services are provided makes a significant impact. To put it another way, you can't necessarily purchase a drone off the shelf and anticipate results similar to those described above. Many businesses, in instance, believe that they can simply purchase a drone, implement a do-it-yourself drone survey program, and start saving time and money right away. However, this is not always the case. This is so because drones don't just exist in a vacuum. A drone program that is administered inefficiently or improperly will eliminate or constrain all of the potential benefits from utilizing drones in the first place. Aerial data collecting technique and skill sets are also important.

First, the technology. LiDAR-equipped drones and vehicles are a prime example of how not all drones are created equal. The sharpness, accuracy, or functionality required to produce the kinds of outcomes presented in this paper may simply not be present in off-the-shelf models. Make sure you are familiar with the precise technologies and technical requirements that will satisfy your needs.

Second, the connection is significant. A partnership with a reliable provider can be extremely helpful in this situation. Companies may need assistance determining what they require and how to use the data most effectively. Sadly, a large number of businesses rely on automated methods with little human engagement, leaving their customers unclear of what to do with the data they've been given.

The company concept is crucial, too. In other words, beyond the technical capabilities of the drones, the vendor needs to have the logistical flexibility to deploy them whenever and wherever they're needed. Being able to deliver on high volume quickly (especially on a recurring basis) depends on setting up a business model that maximizes the advantages of drone data.

CONCLUSION

With an incredible yearly CAGR of over 57.5% predicted through 2028, it is no surprise that the drone industry has been booming. Drones are almost certainly going to replace site surveys, inspections, and other types of data collecting in the future, much as spreadsheets have replaced paper ledgers and smartphones have replaced phone books. Drones are enabling surveyors and inspectors to do more, work more quickly, and save expenses. Cutting-edge technology like LiDAR are further enabling even more fascinating applications and use-cases. But, it's crucial to understand that not all drones and drone services are created equal. In order to achieve the best results, it is essential for drone operators to be skilled and experienced, for equipment to have the appropriate technological capabilities, and for business models to be able to overcome the logistical challenges associated with getting drones where they need to be, when they need to be there. But it is evident that drones are genuinely lifting the possibilities in industrial and commercial data collection when used with the appropriate drones, powered by the appropriate operators, and deployed with the appropriate business strategy.