Industrial Applications for UAV’s (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles)

Industrial Applications for UAV’s (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles)

Date: 5.17.15

Introduction:

The following is summary of applications and some considerations for UAV’s. Our focus was on industrial applications because our industry partner was Dairyland Power. You will find the list below favoring industrial areas, however, there are many other applications for UAV’s

Industrial Applications:

• Land Surveying-50 times faster than land based surveying. One square kilometer per day can be surveyed. Orthophotos (can be georeferenced to a known coordinate system (such as OS National Grid) and overlaid on existing data, used in Google Earth or independently), Digital Elevation Models (3D representation of terrain) and Panoramic Photos.
• Pipeline and Chimney Inspection
• Electrical Utility- live powerline inspection of transmission and distribution towers.
• Thermal Inspections- chimney ducting, flares, chimneys and other process equipment.
• Structural Inspections- surveys of industrial structures including storage tanks, elevated pipe racks, buildings, roofs, ducting, gantries and walkways.
• Ag industry- imagery can be used for crop management.
• Emergency Inspections- provide the information you need to make swift and accurate operational decisions.

Advantages:

• Reduced costs – by minimizing downtime
• No system outage – stay online and operational during inspection
• Minimum Health & Safety issues– unmanned, battery operated UAVs reduce the need for people to be placed in potentially dangerous locations such as remove the need for people to work at height.
• Improve decision making – more detailed and up-to-date than off-the-shelf data

Disadvantages:

• I listed only one here, but it is a big one which covers a wide area of great importance. We have to find a way to strike a careful balance between protecting public safety, personal privacy and allowing commercial UAV’s to develop. That balance has not been attained yet.

Considerations/thoughts:

How do we protect the general public from unwanted aerial photography?

Even smaller (under 10-15 lbs) UAV’s can cause serious injury if the pilot uses control.

Battery life needs to be improved.

Inexperience as a pilot is a major cause of accidents.