FLYING HIGH
Flyability’s Michael Blake highlights the projects benefitting from the evolving capabilities of drones
I’m an architect by trade, however, I never actually worked as one. My degree focused on detailed structural elements of architecture and then I got a summer job working in an underground mine in Ireland. It was through this role that I became a structural inspection engineer, where I helped develop condition monitoring within mining. I’ve been involved in working in mines the world over, such as Namibia and South Africa. I then trained as a non-destructive testing engineer as well. I combined this experience with my hobby of model aeroplanes and helicopters and built my first inspection drone. I built one myself in my shed at home to do some basic visual inspections for use in the mines.
I got really hooked when the mine was visited by a drone company who were able to produce topographical photogrammetry data. So when the mine shut down I went to work for a survey company in Switzerland and trained as a surveyor and became more involved in the development of drones for use in the military. This developed into its use for critical infrastructure, and disaster relief across several roles, and now for use in confined spaces – it’s been a rollercoaster and an amazing journey.
I’ve worked in so many aspects of the drone industry, not only development, as both a hobby and as part of my professional career, but customer service as well and my role now as product manager means that I am able to use my knowledge to work on behalf of the company and the customer.
I trained as a non-destructive testing engineer and combined this experience with my hobby of model aeroplanes and helicopters and built my first inspection drone.
At Flyability, whether this is for drones using ultrasonic testing (UT), radiation sensing, or surveying, the aim is to prioritise exactly what customers are looking for. Some things that customers want may be developments for the future or they may be developments that we can initiate now, it’s about understanding the product’s capabilities, the customer’s needs and the company’s ambitions.
The drone itself is an easy-assemble modular flying drone for which can have a number of payloads attached to it dependent on what it is being used for – mines, nuclear plants, silos, the list is endless. We have a surveying payload, a UT payload, a RAD payload and we’re planning on more. The drone is simply there to provide the platform to fly these different sensors to wherever they need to be, for whatever they need to capture. Its uniqueness is in the fact that the drone has been developed to be collision-tolerant and fly these payloads to largely inaccessible or dangerous areas to provide mapping and inspection safely.
We recently announced a new ultrasonic thickness measurement (UTM) payload for our flagship drone, the Elios 3. It has been designed for spot thickness measurements of steel in ship hulls, inside tanks and between pipe ranks, to name a few, to provide a safer means of accessing thickness measurement locations, completing wall thickness gauging or corrosion surveys in confined spaces, while also producing a 3D map which provides details on exactly where the visuals were taken.
To give an example, it is hugely beneficial in the maritime industry. Ships require a full hull inspection in order to operate. Doing this can require time in the drydock which can cost US$40,000- $50,000 a day. This is not just from loss of operational time but also from the cost of scaffolding, workers, hours spent on the inspection and re-work, not to mention the dangerously confined working conditions to access the ship’s hull. Using the Elios 3 is a cheaper, more efficient and safer solution to do this type of work.
Looking back when I was working with UTM a couple of years ago in mines and now looking at this product as it is now, it is exactly what I would have needed – being able to gather measurements that could provide valuable insight of potential corrosion from inaccessible or dangerous places, safely, is incredible. The ability to capture these types of measurements cheaper, more efficiently and safer, certainly makes this product stand out.
Interestingly, from my own point of view, since we released the indoor lidar drone, we’ve had a lot of interest from the mining industry, plus also from the infrastructure sector, such as subsurface mapping, digital twins and for buildings in general.
Late last year we conducted a proof of concept with Holcim Lafarge in France. As one of the world’s largest cement producers Holcim, is committed to a major project called Plants of Tomorrow. The project includes digitising assets and production sites with the Elios 3 used to map an entire section of a Holcim plant, including the spaces between ducts and pipes. These can be challenging to access and doing with traditional means would likely take at least 10 days of scanning and could cost the plant a minimum of € 30,000, just for hiring a contractor. However, completing the project in-house with the drone meant that site operators could take the scans and process the data – into 2.6 billion points – more quickly.
Pilots were able to gather all of the necessary laser scans in just one day of flying – much faster than the multiple weeks of scanning expected with a terrestrial laser scanner. It was an interesting project, as the design engineering company wanted a ‘schematic design’ – a specific category of BIM model – with the Elios 3 providing this.
Definitely, we do have asset owners who own the product itself, such as sewer network owners, or large petrochemical companies, or mining companies. For these companies, because their revenue is high, the drone itself doesn’t take up much of their budget and the ROI is huge as they’ll use the drone for a lot of inspections or surveying work. However, when it comes to third party companies or smaller surveyor companies, there is a real need for justification for use of a drone. What we offer is quite new to the market and very niche, so for us it’s about education; ensuring our customers know what applications are available and how it can benefit them. From a safety aspect, an efficiency aspect, and a data capture aspect, plus adding the different payloads that we offer now and in the future, these help to increase the ROI on the product itself.
The ICL Boulby, the only polyhalite mine in the world which is just North of Whitby, in Northeast England, was definitely really interesting. The mine runs as deep as 1.2km below the surface and extends underneath the North Sea, reaching as far as 12km off the shore and was originally established to mine potash in 1968, but has now been repurposed to mine polyhalite, an organic fertiliser.
Interestingly, from my own point of view, since we released the indoor lidar drone, we’ve had a lot of interest from the mining industry, plus also from the infrastructure sector, such as subsurface mapping and digital twins, and for buildings in general.
Potash is a really fragile material and the structure is moving all the time, so we used our lidar drone to produce a survey and inspect the mine. No one is allowed in much of these mines because of how dangerous it is, but also no one really understands the length of these tunnels, how safe they are, or where the mechanical mining machine is excavating, because they have no maps.
Part of the challenge of working on such a large, historic site is the huge patchwork of old excavations as well as current excavations. These all need to be very carefully mapped to update records. It also helps avoid old excavation areas, as holing through these risks an inrush of gas or water.
The mine operates an advance and retreat mining method, where tunnels are supported in advance and stripped out on retreat. Once an area has been retreated it becomes a no-go area for personnel. The Elios 3 drone was able to provide a full 3D point cloud to assist the advance retreat mining method while still working within the confines of the regulations of providing the statutory accurate mine records.
It was a fascinating project and one which provides real benefits in such a dangerous environment – it’s extremely hot so far down in the mine – about 40-43 o C and the drone was always coated in salt. It was crazy. Any other upcoming projects you’re excited to be involved in? We really want to be able to refine the drones to provide the full 360 solution. I’ll soon have the opportunity to visit some of Chile’s high altitude mines and test our drones at altitudes of 3,000-3,500m above sea level. It’ll be amazing to be able to capture this data and on the back of that, refine our workflows. There’s just so many projects, like this one, that we’re currently involved and they’re all pretty exciting, so I’d say watch this space.