The Federal Aviation Administration is a very conservative organization, and rules for commercial drones are strict. But the agency does have a mechanism for issuing waivers to these rules. And it appears that the FAA has finally issued its first COVID-19 drone waiver.
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Japanese mobile service provider Rakuten Mobile has announced it will begin to use drones for inspections to replace the need for humans to manually check its base station. The drones will take various photos of each mask for later inspection by the team.
Drones demonstrated their usefulness during a recent Tokyo Metro Co. demonstration, showing reporters how it’s utilizing drones to improve tunnel safety. The inspection drones were flown at the Koto Ward facility in Tokyo and have been using drones since the 6th of February to inspect tunnels.
New York City Council is pushing to use drones for facade inspections in New York City following a horrific accident last year, when a piece of facade came loose from a building and killed a pedestrian.
Drone maker Skyfront has partnered with Silvus Technologies to create a drone with a maximum flight time of five hours and an operating distance of 100km. The new long-range drone will allow operators to inspect pipelines and other assets as well as conduct long-range surveillance missions.
Florida Power and Light use a DJI Phantom 4 drone for powerline maintenance and repairs as the unmanned aircraft can provide a 360-degree view that is difficult to achieve otherwise. “Drones offer a huge advantage,” according to the utility’s technology manager, Eric Schwartz.
Drones used to inspect troubled bridges in South Carolina by researchers at Clemson University and the University of South Carolina. Once that project has been completed, the results will be handed over to the South Carolina Department of Transportation. The research team is using drones and robots in Lexington County to assess the bridges both below and above the water.
Sulzer & Schmid is a Swiss tech company that uses the DJI Matrice 210 for a new drone-based wind turbine inspection platform. Their new 3DX HD product is based on the M210 drone and provides autonomous inspections at a lower cost compared with the company’s existing 3DXTM system, which is based on the DJI M600, according to the company.
North American Windpower reported that drones were used to inspect all 264 blades across 88 wind turbines of a Statoil wind farm, covering an area of approximately 22 square miles, located off the coast of England. The so-called Sheringham Shoal Wind Farm is one of the ten largest wind farms in existence and has a capacity of 317 MW, enough to power up to 220,000 homes in the U.K.
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