How Drones Improve Infrastructure Inspection

It takes a vast network of infrastructure assets to make a morning cup of coffee. Wind turbines and gas pipelines provide energy. Power lines carry it to activate espresso machines. Trucks navigate the highways and bridges to deliver the coffee beans to the stores.

But society runs on more than coffee. Thousands of infrastructural assets support the steady flow of our daily lives, thus requiring inspections and maintenance to minimize wear and tear. Asset integrity inspection at scale is resource-heavy.

So drones enter the scene, augmenting human capability to cover greater distances, access remote areas, and obtain richer asset conditioning data without extensive prep work.

Learn how drone infrastructure inspection works and what are its advantages from this post.

How Are Drones Used in Infrastructure Inspection?

Drones help collect detailed, real-time data about asset conditions, especially in hard-to-reach areas. With drones, inspection of wind blades, bridges, or dams doesn’t require temporary asset shutdown, scaffolding construction, or rope access. Equipped with high-precision sensors and NDT probes, drones detect defects and material degradation early, allowing for preventative maintenance.

Here are a few examples where drone services bring the most value for infrastructure inspection:

• Bridge inspections: Drones easily fly over bridge decks, superstructures, and substructures, scanning for concrete cracks, spalling, and section loss. In metal bridges, drones with NDT probes can detect early signs of corrosion, welding flaws, and thinning of metal plates.

• Power line inspections. Drones reach high-altitude power transmission structures to check for visual damage and tower corrosion. Thermal cameras detect electrical leaks. You can also monitor right-of-way conditions for vegetation and fauna hazards or illegal construction sites.

• Pipeline inspections. Drones can oversee miles of pipes in one go — a benefit in remote mountainous, desert, or forested areas. Specialized drone payloads can locate leaks, cracks, corrosion, and insulation loss in hard-to-access components like pipe elbows and angled sections.

• Roadway inspections can be done quickly by drones without closing lanes. High-precision cameras detect pavement damage like cracking, crazing, and rutting. Autonomy allows automated monitoring of high-traffic, accident-prone areas.

• Wind turbine inspections. Drones can inspect rotating wind blades for cracks, delaminations, corrosion, or coating thinning. High-performance rotors allow them to withstand winds during inspections and an LPS probe determines if wind turbines are lightning-proof.

• Railway inspections. Drones scan miles of railway in a single operation, detecting broken rails, head checking, corrugations, indentations, and flaking. You can also monitor tracks for obstacles like fallen trees, abandoned vehicles, and power line collapses.

6 Advantages of Doing Infrastructure Inspection by Drone

Infrastructure reliability impacts every facet of life, from trade and public safety to education and recreation. Unnoticed defects can lead to collapses, environmental risks, and life-threatening situations.

Imagine the disruptions if Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the world’s longest bridge over water carrying over 62,000 vehicles daily, stopped functioning. To avoid such scenarios,government agencies mandate routine inspections: weekly for railroads, bi-yearly for bridges, and every 5 years for pipelines and wind turbines.

Inspection drones help pass checks without causing a strain on people and budgets. In many cases, drones reduce inspection times for an asset by 4X and can potentially save up to $165k for a single inspection.

And the benefits don’t just end with cost and speed. Here are six more advantages of using drones for infrastructure inspection.

Richer, Real-Time Inspection Data

Visual inspection and non-destructive testing — modern inspection drones combine both. Top models include the latest visual sensors (e.g., CMOS) and optics for sharp images in low-light and dynamic environments.

In addition, many enterprise drones include extra payloads such as:

• Advanced imaging systems provide close-up, real-time streaming, and recording of surface-level damage. A wide-angle camera maps the asset’s surroundings. Some drones have great night vision — handy for scheduling work outside of operating hours.

• Radiometric thermal cameras measure the temperature of inspected objects, identifying leaks and changes in operating conditions.

• Ultrasonic and EMAT probes help identify surface and subsurface defects, including their size, shape, depth, and direction.

• Eddy-current probe locates subsurface defects and corrosion under insulation for conductive materials, even on inhomogeneous structures.

• LPS tester measures circuit resistance in wind turbine lightning protection systems.

Specialized payloads even allow working on high-temperature surfaces. Middough selected Voliro T fitted with an EMAT probe to inspect heated piping and collected up to 100 high-precision corrosion readings per hour, live displayed in the Voliro App. What’s more, Voliro managed to provide measurements even on hard-to-reach angled pipe segments.

International government agencies also confirm the high accuracy of drone inspections. The Minnesota Department of Transportation used UAVs to monitor the Arcola Bridge and captured detailed images of corroded parts without being too close to the structure. Meanwhile, Korean Railroad Research Institute (KRRI) uses AI-powered drones to inspect railway infrastructure and reports 90% precision in inspection camera images and 100 mm accuracy for defect location.

Time and Cost Efficiency

Using drones for infrastructure inspection eliminates the need for expensive scaffolding, cherry-picker rentals, or dangerous rope climbing. Drones are highly maneuverable, weather-resistant, and fitted with heat-resistant probes, making them capable of inspecting running assets with minimal operational disruption.

In one case, Bilfinger, a global industrial service provider, saved almost $165,000 for their customer by performing a single inspection with Voliro T. Mounted with a high-temp UT probe, Voliro provided readings on a 400-feet flare stack, no pre-cooling required. Without scaffolding, project rescheduling, and downtime, Bilfinger performed the inspection 95% faster than traditional methods.

The best inspection drones also have long battery life and can be deployed for long-range missions. For example, inspect miles of piping, railway, or roads at one time, thus reducing the cost of patrolling large areas by foot or by car.

Finally, drone-assisted inspections require smaller crews (hence fewer man-hours). For instance, the West Virginia Department of Transportation (WVDOT) invested $25K into the equipment and pilots to streamline the inspection of aggregate stockpiles. In just 1 month, the drone crew saved the department more than $343K. By scaling the inspection team down by 83%, WVDOT performed inspections 40% faster.

Early Issue Detection

Infrastructure inspection drones discover early defects using mounted NDT probes. Regular scans detect early signs of corrosion, erosion, wall thickness thinning, cracking, and material degradation. For instance, Voliro’s UT probe has a resolution of 0.06 mm / 0.002 in. And the PEC probe can detect traces of corrosion under the insulation with up to 100 mm of thickness.

Early issue detection allows infrastructure owners to plan preventative maintenance and root-cause analysis. For example, in bridge assessments, excessive wear could indicate high traffic load or frequent weight limit violations. Seattle City Light, an owner and manager of a 389-foot Diablo Dam, paired drone-assisted issue detection with artificial intelligence for even better results. The public utility used UAVs to photograph the dam’s condition and collect almost 80 million x, y, and z coordinates. Then, they converted the specs into a virtual 3D model. Their team is developing an AI algorithm to recognize concrete cracks and spalling in real time, distinguishing them from algae or shadows.

Greater Personnel Safety

Drones let your inspection teams keep their feet on the ground and out of harm’s way. This avoids climbing bridges, windmills, and flare stacks or having an unpleasant encounter with wildlife during foot patrols.

Drones are better equipped for tolling “physical” work. Advanced navigation gear, including GPS/GNSS receivers, gyroscopes, accelerometers, and LiDAR scanners, lets them easily cruise outdoors and in confined spaces, carefully avoiding obstacles. Some enterprise drone models boast 5G connectivity and long data transmission ranges, allowing autonomous flight and BVLOS operations. This way, your pilots won’t even have to leave the office, steering the drone from the safety of a browser.

Personnel safety was one of the priorities of the Austrian Federal Railway (ÖBB). The organization designated drones as first responders in emergencies. Should rockfalls and storms bring trouble to the inaccessible rail lines, drones will supply ÖBB’s personnel with high-precision incident pictures.

Drones also improve safety levels for the NYPD. This year, New York’s Finest deployed drones to inspect bridges after a 4.8-magnitude earthquake hit the city. They were looking for any weather-related defects — from loose shackings to broken bricks.

Unmatched Versatility

Most inspection drones come pre-furnished with wide-angle RGB cameras, an RTK module, and LiDAR sensors for industrial photogrammetry. Others like Voliro include interchangeable probes for non-destructive testing at height. Moreover, many models can be custom-fitted with other payloads to support other inspection use cases.

For instance, the Voliro drone can perform at least three different types of wind turbine inspections. With a 4K HD camera, it can visually inspect the integrity of blades, rotors, and other components. Mount it with a DFT probe – and you get high-precision measurements of protective coating thickness. Switch to the LPS probe and in just 20 min you know every detail about lightning protection on your wind turbine.

Inspection is not the only way drones can elevate your infrastructure management. They collect vast amounts of data that you can feed to photogrammetry, data analytics, and asset management software. This offers vast opportunities: digital twins of your pipelines, spatially accurate 3D models of dams, or custom algorithms to predict traffic on roadways.

Sustainable Practices in Inspections

Drones have an environmental advantage over traditional inspection methods. To begin with, they don’t produce waste which can occur during scaffolding construction. Also, drones eliminate the use of heavy inspection equipment that consumes fuel – like cherry pickers, road-rail vehicles, crane trucks, underbridge access equipment, or even standard patrol cars.

AB Kelių priežiūra, a Lithuanian state-owned company, decided to apply drones for inspections of 21 thousand km (13K miles) of national roads. By replacing specialized inspection vehicles with drones, they plan to reduce CO₂ emissions from inspections by 90%.

So if you’re looking to achieve both greater operating efficiencies and a carbon footprint reduction, infrastructure inspection by drone is the way to go.

Summary

Drones offer unmatched efficiency in infrastructure inspection, letting you perform more work in less time with no compromise on accuracy. The obtained inspection data is rich and reliable, giving clear insight into real asset performance to streamline decision-making. Plus, drones take away the burden of lengthy set-up and safety concerns for personnel.

But we saved the bonus for last. But we saved the bonus for last. With Voliro, you get all the benefits of drone inspections without complex hardware maintenance. Our subscription includes the latest features and updates, all-risk insurance with immediate replacements, free repairs, spares, annual hardware changes, and sensor recertification.