Pandemic And Technology Synergy Drives Adoption In Remote Inspection
Social distancing, drones and virtual reality capabilities is helping to fast track acceptance of remote inspection but drone autonomy and artificial intelligence could bring further changes in the near future.
According to Bentley Systems vice president transportation asset management Dan Vogen, “the safety, the time, the money and the pandemic” have all been drivers for the move towards increased remote inspections.
“Use of drones has been a big driver in the change we have seen in the inspections sector,” he said. “Owners no longer have to have so much equipment in the field in order to get access to their structures. Rope access and mountain rock climbing skills are no longer critical to achieving inspections.
“Use of drones brought easy access to more difficult positions along the structure in a much faster way. Users have reported that the cost of inspections has fallen as a result – by up to 30% in some cases – because of eliminated equipment needs and the reduced time needed for an inspection.
“We now need to take that to the next level. These drones are out there taking flights of structures and, if we can define a proper flight path for collection of the data, with the right pictures and angles, we can create a really good reality mesh that creates a visual twin of that structure. This will then allow for totally remote inspection.
“We see over and again that historical inspection reports have textual input and have pictures about areas of concern but the pictures are taken from different angles and positions, which makes it hard to compare changes. With the reality meshes – a digital twin of the structure – we can pick up that real engineering detail to precisely compare the rate of change.”
“The safety, the time, the money and the pandemic have all been factors in the increased uptake.” Vogen added that the virtual inspections made any on-site work can be targeted to areas of concern rather than the whole structure.
Vogen believes that this is just the start of change in inspection market. “Over the next five to 10 years I expect the precision of the models to continue to improve,” he said. “I expect that in the same way as we might have autonomous drone delivery of packages to our home, we will see more autonomy with the drones going out to survey structures on a more frequent basis. In the past inspection cruise might be sent out every two years and now the drone can go out every month and artificial intelligence will be used to alert infrastructure owners to problems and changes rather than having to check the models each month.
Source: newcivilengineer
