I work for a utility company and this is brilliant. One other issue that comes into play for inspections is right of way. My understanding of this is a bit fuzzy but is very interesting. Back in the day, if a power company had a transmission line on the property, they could just go out and service it. With modern infrastructure frequently being on top of one another, power lines, internet cables, pipes, this becomes a more complicated issue and so property management and the ability to access sites becomes a question. Drones can frequently go where people can't so in thick vegetation I can see this really working for surveying. Very cool.
Love the name. Perhaps an angle you haven't considered is rapid quantitative data gathering for site inspection for rapid setup of non-traditional infrastructure like wind and solar. Should be zeitgeist with gas prices shooting through the roof. By actually being 250-400ft above the proposed site and taking real measurements you get actionable insights. Multi-season survey ideal but raw data from a specific site has gravitas and seasonal inference is straightforward within a confidence interval.
Interesting! This is new to me. I know wind farm inspection is another really solid market (smaller land areas and high frequency - could be 1 pad for a whole farm), but I am not familiar with the rapid setup renewables. Can you share more?
Maybe open show some fraction of your data on your website with a nationwide map or something, so such prospective customers can see exactly what you can provide. Then charge for the full dataset
I got a survey of my residential property, 1/2 acre on a rugged hillside, from a guy who used a drone equipped with lidar. It was $4,000, less than traditional methods, but it would be cool if a drone could just be dispatched from a nearby power pole instead.
Hey, I just did this as well, but with 180 acres of very rugged ravines in rural Kentucky near red river gorge. I only paid $700 though.
My goal was to find all the old logging roads on the property, so I could revive them as hiking and 4x4 trails. This worked excellently as the resolution of the lidar was even better than he quoted and the roads stand out easily (especially after some face coloring based off of slope in blender).
Was your operator a licensed surveyor? Mine was definitely not and (politely) asked me to change my google review to remove any reference to the word "land survey" since he was not licensed to do that.
Yes, this was needed for civil engineering and city permits to replace a retaining wall that holds my driveway up and (hopefully!) keeps it from sliding onto my neighbors fancy expensive house. All licensed and by the book. Quotes from other surveyors were 2x and more.
That's cool to discover entire roads you didn't know about. I would be hoping to discover an ancient city, like they did in central and South America with lidar. Are you sure there aren't any? Look again!
That's super expensive. The majority of those costs are driven by the CapEx of the LiDAR unit. Ours is over $20k. In reality, though, it cost probably <$200 of operating expenses to collect that data.
The solution here is higher utilization of expensive LiDAR. So many pads, and few drones :D
At my job [0] we work in this exact space, but on the data analytics side of things. We build computer vision pipelines for corrosion, components, defects, etc. We process imagery from drones, helis and satellite.
This is a tough problem to solve and for a lot of operators ultimately comes down to cost.
We're based in the UK but reach out if you wanna chat!
Happy to chat! We’re 100% focused on data collection, so partnering with folks downstream is right up our alley.
And yes-- certainly a tough problem to solve! There’s pattern we keep seeing in the utility inspection space where teams start with a great defect detection or analytics product, then try to verticalize by adding data collection, basically spinning up a small aviation operation inside a SaaS company. I'm sure you've seen this plenty of times. Our hope here is to make collection simple enough so that doesn't need to keep happening :)
Sounds like a neat space to be in. Wishing you calm skies next month. I guess you'll have all the goodies (RFI detectors, thermal imaging sensors, etc.) to collect data? I wonder to what extent detection from a distance (discovery?) and investigation of faults can be automated. Hopefully using drones for good will be sufficient for a viable business model. We've enough surveillance as it is.
We're collecting 61MP RGB, LiDAR (DSM DTM) and radiometric thermal for sensors
We're thinking of flying at ~150' AGL or ~100' ATO at over 20 mph to collect data when automated. There's trade offs between effective speed, localized navigation, and mission planning. It's just challenging to build fully automated systems, but generally speaking flying higher and faster is more efficient and safer (also helps with command-and-control links)
There’s no real way around BVLOS regs right now. The real problem is BVLOS + need to recharge. If you only solve one, you get limited value. Distributed charging without BVLOS is kind of useless. If a human still has to be there to maintain visual line of sight, it doesn't make much of a difference if the drone can recharge itself in the field. BVLOS without distributed charging also hits a value ceiling. You’re still constrained by battery swaps.
So the solution here is a deep understanding of FAA BVLOS waiver processes + a drone/pad network that is actually scalable.
That said, this is another benefit of working with utilities. When you’re inspecting power line corridors, you’re often operating in what the FAA calls “shielded area.” In practice, that just means you’re flying close to infrastructure that other aircraft tend to avoid anyway. That makes deconfliction much simpler, which in turn makes BVLOS waivers more attainable under Part 107.
The bigger shift is Part 108, which is expected to be finalized relatively soon, and should lower the barrier to BVLOS at scale.
Follow up question, why aerial drones? Couldn't crawler drones work and avoid FAA regulations? Though obviously would be limited in speed and where lines have been damaged, though perhaps they could be managed to go around the damage via remote control.
Crawler drones are not a bad idea! They're just a bit slow and limiting. Also doesn't drive our long term plan (can't leave power lines)
It's also mechanically complex and there's many line & pole types that make it challenging to build for.
When we let go of distribution line charging, we considered this idea. Off some rough calcs we thought there would be lines that we'd get 'stuck' on so that was hard to overcome...
I worked at a place that provided services to railroad owners. This was back in the 90s, but they had camera rigs on engines that would record multiple angles along the train routes. They would store that footage in massive tape libraries to be used as reference to see the terrain in an area that service was needed to they'd know what kind of equipment would be necessary as well as a visual of the tracks themselves. They could not update the footage as fast as they liked. IIRC, footage was over a year old before getting updated.
Just another suggestion of a sector you could gain traction as it wasn't listed.
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My goal was to find all the old logging roads on the property, so I could revive them as hiking and 4x4 trails. This worked excellently as the resolution of the lidar was even better than he quoted and the roads stand out easily (especially after some face coloring based off of slope in blender).
Was your operator a licensed surveyor? Mine was definitely not and (politely) asked me to change my google review to remove any reference to the word "land survey" since he was not licensed to do that.
That's cool to discover entire roads you didn't know about. I would be hoping to discover an ancient city, like they did in central and South America with lidar. Are you sure there aren't any? Look again!
The solution here is higher utilization of expensive LiDAR. So many pads, and few drones :D
This is a tough problem to solve and for a lot of operators ultimately comes down to cost.
We're based in the UK but reach out if you wanna chat!
[0] https://keen-ai.com/
And yes-- certainly a tough problem to solve! There’s pattern we keep seeing in the utility inspection space where teams start with a great defect detection or analytics product, then try to verticalize by adding data collection, basically spinning up a small aviation operation inside a SaaS company. I'm sure you've seen this plenty of times. Our hope here is to make collection simple enough so that doesn't need to keep happening :)
I'll reach out!
We're thinking of flying at ~150' AGL or ~100' ATO at over 20 mph to collect data when automated. There's trade offs between effective speed, localized navigation, and mission planning. It's just challenging to build fully automated systems, but generally speaking flying higher and faster is more efficient and safer (also helps with command-and-control links)
So the solution here is a deep understanding of FAA BVLOS waiver processes + a drone/pad network that is actually scalable.
That said, this is another benefit of working with utilities. When you’re inspecting power line corridors, you’re often operating in what the FAA calls “shielded area.” In practice, that just means you’re flying close to infrastructure that other aircraft tend to avoid anyway. That makes deconfliction much simpler, which in turn makes BVLOS waivers more attainable under Part 107.
The bigger shift is Part 108, which is expected to be finalized relatively soon, and should lower the barrier to BVLOS at scale.
It's also mechanically complex and there's many line & pole types that make it challenging to build for.
When we let go of distribution line charging, we considered this idea. Off some rough calcs we thought there would be lines that we'd get 'stuck' on so that was hard to overcome...
Just another suggestion of a sector you could gain traction as it wasn't listed.
https://bright.ai/autonomous-inspection/
definitely where we want to be as a society! Keep up!