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TECHNICAL
have in order to capture the right data of the right places
to successfully create a 3D model of that area,” he says. where it can be retrieved, manipulated, and studied
later at the operator’s convenience.
“The user will put in the boundary of the construction
site and press the ‘Go’ button,” he says. “And we
figure out how fast it should be flying, what camera
parameters it should have, make sure that all the
drone subsystems are in a safe state, check in with
the aerospace. All of the complexities behind doing
a good job, we will automate. The drone will take off
automatically, capture the images automatically, come
back home, and land completely automatically.” “That’s a great vision of the future, and that’s exactly
what we’re hoping to unlock,” Millin says. “All the
technology that’s required to do what you suggest does
exist; the regulations are, right now, the big blocker for
us to be able to do that effectively.”
Things aren’t entirely automated and hands-off,
though. Current regulations require pilots to have
eyes on their drones at all times and each drone in
the air requires a pilot to be ready to take over flying
chores if the electronics suffer a glitch. Soon enough,
however, there might come a day when a building
maintenance operator will unleash a squadron of
pre-programmed drones from a shed on the roof of
a building, each one flying its own mission, taking
its own pre-programmed photos, and eventually
returning to its very own landing spot and, perhaps,
automatically downloading its photo data to storage
February 2019 Volume 24 I Number 12
Laporte says some of the science fiction-like possibilities
made available by drone technology are already being
realised. Consider the sewers of Barcelona, for example.
“They have very old, huge sewers — eight or 10 feet in
diameter,” she says. “They send drones in to inspect where
the leaks are and where they need to fix them. And that’s
an autonomous mission for sure because of gases being
a risk. The other thing is the sensor technology is really
evolving incredibly. So, you can sense gases, methane for
example. In fact, I’m planning on purchasing a drone that
can use an infrared camera and multispectral camera to
detect leaks from water pipelines.”
MEANWHILE ...
We can hear a faint whistling buzz as we watch the
drone fly its pre-programmed mission, a large S-shaped
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