In today's market, many businesses and organizations are utilizing drone services such as drone inspection. This is a trend that is appearing in many industries and verticals typically used for maintenance inspection procedures.
By using a drone to collect visual data on the condition of an asset, drone inspections help inspectors avoid having to place themselves in dangerous situations. Aerial Inspection enables precise remote monitoring of work sites to help keep projects on track and on budget. It also exposes key issues before they create hazards or delays.
Visual inspections are critical to ensuring the proper maintenance of a company’s assets. While it’s true that most drone inspections are visual inspections drones can also be equipped with special sensors that allow them to perform other kinds of inspections.
For example, in agriculture drones are being outfitted with multispectral sensors so that farmers can record images of crops in distinct spectral bands. And in HVAC inspections, some inspectors are putting a thermal camera on their drone to identify where heat is leaking out of a building.
Benefits to Aerial Inspection
Reduced risk. Inspector no longer has to be put into potentially dangerous situations.
Savings—temporary structures. Savings as a result of not needing to build scaffolding or other temporary, one-use infrastructure to support a manual inspection (as applicable—not all inspection scenarios require scaffolding).
Savings—downtime. For assets like nuclear power plants or pressure vessels, which need to be shut off before an inspection can be performed, every second of downtime means a loss of revenue. Using a drone to make turnarounds more efficient can mean big savings for companies that use these assets in their operations.
Savings—liability insurance. By significantly reducing the amount of time personnel is placed in dangerous situations companies can reduce their corresponding insurance costs.
Increased safety through increased inspections. Given the relatively low cost of drone inspections, many companies are using them to perform inspections more regularly, which means that potential problems can be surfaced and addressed more quickly.
Better records. Drone data represents a meticulous record of the condition of an asset over time. By archiving visual data, companies have a digital footprint of the asset’s life history that can be accessed at any time.
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