Drones and connectivity

Drones are increasingly replacing unsafe jobs in a myriad of industries.

It is no secret that drones are increasingly showing up in places from which they were frequently absent. From videography to inspections to heavy industry, drones are finding more and more real-world applications and their versatility is enabling them to take on more and more missions.

We will take a look at the advantages drones present in the areas in which they are appearing and then we’ll look at some of the case studies showing the real-life applications of drones in use.

Before we begin, however, we should take a minute to discuss just how these drones will operate: beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) is an extension of line of sight (LOS) and extended line of sight (ELOS) operation.

BVLOS drone operations do not require that the operator be within eye contact of the drone he is operating. Quite the contrary, in the near future we predict that drones will not exist in a 1:1 drone/operator relationship, but we envision large regional drone network operation centres (DNOC) controlling hundreds of drones spread across a region that is hundreds or thousands of square miles in area.

What this means for drone operation is that scalability is a key point in how drones will be used. It may well be commonplace in several years to see a swarm of drones inspecting miles of powerlines, or seeing drones performing surveying and mapping at a large quarry. When the only thing limiting the operation of the drone is battery power and connectivity, the possibilities are vast.

Advantages

Drones come with several inherent advantages.

Drones are small, which also means that everything related to them is small, from the number of people required to operate one to their carbon footprint and everything in between. Moreover, drones have a positive size/weight to benefit ratio: small drones can complete large missions, far above what you would expect from a drone that weighs under 25 kilograms.

Even the most expensive drones come with a price tag that is a fraction of what it would cost to purchase the crewed vehicles required to complete the same mission, in many cases a utility vehicle or a helicopter, plus the expense of a highly trained team of operators. Further costs come in the operation of the drone, which, again, come at a fraction of the cost of a crewed mission.

By operating drones instead of crewed vehicles, especially for missions that are hazardous in their nature, the risks of a technical or other form of mission failure are greatly reduced and limited. The loss of a drone, while inconvenient and involving the cost of purchasing a replacement, is nothing compared to the costs of an unfortunate incident involving injuries or fatalities. By their nature of being uncrewed, drones can be deployed to areas which are hazardous or hostile to humans, such as a chemical spill, a radiation leak or any of numerous other instances where it is imperative to get eyes on an area quickly to get a status update without endangering lives.

The same drone can be used for several different missions and mission profiles, based on requirements. As a result, drones provide great flexibility for their operators.

Use cases

Mining

There are approximately 46,000 mines spread across the globe, with almost a third of them in the United States and another third in the Asia–Pacific region. Drones are already being deployed and used in many of these mines. Some of the main tasks performed by the drones at the mines include surveying and mapping and stockpile management.

Drones are able to capture high-quality images of entire mining operations and can do this faster and more economically than the other prevalent methods used today. Mine operators can then increase profits by using this photography to identify valuable pockets of minerals and elements and schedule them for digging.

Drones are also being used for underground surveys, in many cases being done completely autonomously in areas which are too deep or too dangerous for humans to enter.

As for stockpile management, routine volumetric measurements help operators keep track of inventory, plan shipments and prevent theft. Using drones and utilising terrain models of inventory levels allows the mining companies to track stockpile changes and movements, which then further allows the companies to easily validate financial statements and other transactions.

Oil and gas

Drones are used in the oil and gas industry to inspect refineries, pipelines and onshore and offshore platforms. Drones are used to monitor both offshore and onshore assets for safety reasons as well as for regulatory compliance purposes. In addition, drones can be used to detect spills, track gas emissions and even inspect flare stacks.

Additional inspection use cases include offshore inspections of oil rigs: cranes, derricks and other hard to access areas; booms and flare tips to better plan for replacement/maintenance; splash areas to look for corrosion.

Onshore refineries can use drones to inspect: chimneys for cracks and anomalies; storage tanks for corrosion and leaks.

Utilities

The challenge presented by the necessity to inspect an ever-increasing number of powerlines, towers and wind turbines forms a prime opportunity for drone usage, proving the value they create.

Utility companies are using drones to transform the manner in which maintenance and inspection personnel perform their jobs. By distributing highly customisable drones and their command-and-control technology to tower climbers and line crews, surveyors and environmentalists, utility companies are embracing the flexibility provided by drones.

As drone applications evolve beyond the experimental and pilot stages, utility companies are projected to outsource a large part of their standard operating tasks to inspection service providers. These companies then have the option to choose to retain only those internal company-specific and specialised functions.

With an estimation of at least 250,000 communications towers in the United States alone (and with that number expected to grow as 5G rollout continues across the country), routine inspection on an average of approximately once every three years will require that utilities companies find a new way to drastically increase their productivity. By using BVLOS drones outfitted with high-definition cameras, the need for climbers to scale towers occurs only when repairs are required.

Using drones decreases the need for climbers to perform the work, increasing safety and efficiency. The same holds true for wind turbines.

In the case of powerline inspections, this comes into even sharper focus when looking at the costs associated with the inspections: per mile, helicopter inspection of powerlines can cost anywhere from 5–8 times the cost of using a drone for the same inspections (US$200–$300/mile for a drone, versus $1200–$1600/mile for helicopter inspections).

Conclusion

As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, it is clear to see that drones are taking a larger part of the pie when it comes to taking over from humans or assisting companies in ways that were not possible before, either due to costs, complexity or safety issues. The selection of use cases, outlined here, showed how companies in all areas of life are currently, plus in the future will be, successfully making use of drones. The other industries outlined which we did not explore are also taking advantage of the capabilities offered by the drones.

The benefits of BVLOS drone operations are here to stay — it is now up to the various companies and industries to implement them successfully.

Yoav Amitai is the Chief Executive Officer of Elsight. Their proprietary bonding technology incorporates both software and hardware elements to deliver reliable, secure, high-bandwidth, real-time connectivity — even in the most challenging areas — for stationary, portable or actively mobile situational requirements.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/katy_89