Drone Inspections

In a US-first, two programs running under the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) are coming together to improve road safety with tethered drones.

Lithuania is looking to drones to improve the quality of its road infrastructure. AB Kelių priežiūra, a state-owned company that ensures the maintenance of almost 13,050 miles (21,000 km) of national roads, is teaming up with drone manufacturer Thrust and tech company Agmis to automate road inspections with flying machines and artificial intelligence.

Switzerland-based Sulzer Schmid has launched a new plug-and-play solution that enables most off-the-shelf DJI drones to perform semi-autonomous wind turbine blade inspections.

Singapore-based drone solutions company Avetics Global says it’s set to make confined-space inspection more accessible with an affordable new product, Lumicopter. Combining the DJI FPV drone with a custom-made protective shell and LED light, Lumicopter has been designed to fly in enclosed or hazardous facilities such as storage tanks, building interiors, powerplants, ships, etc.

Singapore-based drone technology player H3 Dynamics is joining forces with Sitemark – a specialist AI-analytics company from Belgium – to launch a new robots-as-a-service solution for autonomous solar farm monitoring and inspection.

Drone mission planning platform Drone Harmony is having a very exciting 2022 thus far. Last month, the Switzerland-based company announced it had raised $1.6 million for product innovation. And today, we are hearing about an exciting new partnership with FlyNex, a German software integration platform, resulting in a one-stop drone data solution for energy and construction companies.

Percepto, whose autonomous inspection platform AIM was named one of 100 Best Inventions of 2021 by Time magazine, has received the green light from the FAA for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone operations at Delek US Holdings’ refineries in Texas and Arkansas.

US oil major Chevron has been benefiting from drone technology for many years. Among other things, the company is known to deploy drones for leak detection, internal equipment and asset inspection, earthworks mapping, project progress monitoring, and environmental applications. And now, the energy giant is looking to add more autonomous tools to its arsenal by placing a purchase order with American Robotics.

Santa Monica-based aerial imaging and data processing specialist DroneBase is strengthening its services to solar energy clients with piloted airplane surveys to provide annual audits of infrastructure supplementing the company’s routine drone inspections.

South Korea’s flag carrier Korean Air has succeeded in deploying multiple drones simultaneously to shorten aircraft inspection time and improve operational stability dramatically. The unprecedented feat was at display at the airline’s headquarters today.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has taken another stride toward the routine use of drones for passenger aircraft inspection. It’s transforming its previously exploratory relationship with UAV service provider Mainblades into a multi-year partnership that aims to develop the automated process into a regular part of airline maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) activity.

New York City’s Department of Buildings has released a study on the potential use of drones for structural and facade inspections, judging the prospect promising yet not ready for deployment just yet.

Drone-in-a-box solutions provider Percepto, whose autonomous inspection platform AIM has been named as one of 100 Best Inventions of 2021 by Time magazine, has launched a new drone called Air Mobile. In addition, the Israel-based company has also updated AIM to deliver AI-powered packaged solutions for sector-specific use cases, such as solar, mining, energy, oil and gas, etc.

Mere months after closing a $12.5 million Series C round, DroneBase, a California-based drone data collection and analytics startup, has raised $20 million in growth funding. The funding is being deployed across product development, international expansion, and go-to-market business units, with the company looking to hire at least 35 additional full-time employees by 2022.

The New York State Thruway Authority, which manages New York’s 570-mile toll highway system, says it will begin testing drone technology for infrastructure inspections in partnerships with UAV nonprofit organization Northeast UAS Airspace Integration Research Alliance (NUAIR).

Choo choo! Alternating between an uncrewed aerial vehicle and a robotic ground device, a new drone by Europe-based Nordic Unmanned promises to get maintenance and inspection tasks in the railway industry back on track.

The UK Department for Transport (DfT) is launching a multimillion-pound initiative to improve local roads across England. Among other things, this program aims to explore the use of drones and 3D printing technology when it comes to finding and fixing potholes.

While it’s important to check out recently flown airplanes for any signs of damages or defects, aircraft inspection is a process riddled with many challenges. The aviation industry wants to modernize this system with smart, automatic drones. And in Europe, one company has achieved a major milestone by completing a fully automated outdoor airport drone inspection of a commercial aircraft at an active airfield.

There seems to be no end to the expanding capacities being put to use by drones from above. Their performance underwater, however, has been kept, literally, on a tight leash: the tether required to communicate data to and from the surface. That may now change.

Forced to think out of the box and come up with a safer way to demonstrate the integrity of remediated nuclear waste sites during the COVID-19 pandemic, a South Carolina contractor is now turning to drone-based aerial inspections.

When it first sought to boost business and improve the quality of its service, bridge inspection specialist Japan Infrastructure Waymark (JIW) turned to drones – yet was quickly disappointed with the performance delivered. Rather than dump the entire technology, however, JIW pivoted to automated, AI-enhanced Skydio craft and watched its activity blast off.