TECHNICAL
pattern some 280 feet above the construction site. The
drone dutifully flies through the still, cool air between
36 predetermined checkpoints on its route. At each,
the craft establishes a rock-solid hover for the brief
moment it takes to capture a high-resolution photograph
of the terrain directly below with its gimble-mounted
20-megapixel camera.
“You can do more frequent documentation of specific
aspects of a project and then share those remotely
with project managers in the office,” she says. “So,
people can make decisions about things. For example,
if you’re digging a footing and there’s something
that’s in the way, you can take a photograph, send
it to someone so they don’t have to travel. So, it’s
certainly less time-consuming.”
The entire flight, including a global-positioning system-
assisted autonomous return to the exact spot from
which it had taken off, takes about three minutes.
Laporte monitors the flight’s progress and autonomous
return to its take-off coordinates. The plan for this
series of pictures is to use software to knit them
together into a two- or three-dimensional mosaic of the
entire site. She agrees with Millin, saying there’s much
more to it than simple mapping. Saving time is saving money. And, using drone
technology, construction managers can not only
monitor progress on a project, they can also
easily make certain they have all the materials they
need or easily assess damage and formulate repair
plans without leaving their desks. Does that pile of
gravel seem a little small to be 25 cubic yards?
Call in the drone.
“The aerial perspective is different from a site
perspective because you see the integration of parts,”
she says. “For example, connections of pipes: from the
air you have a bird’s eye view, whereas from the site
you might not see those connections as well.” Laporte
adds that she is set to monitor this site until the
project’s completion in 2019. “We have a suite of tools online to do that analysis
for you,” DroneDeploy’s Millin says. “So, you can just
select a stockpile, and we will automatically compute
the volume. And typically, you know, we find from
our customers that we tend to be potentially even
more accurate than using a laser scanner or a typical
survey method.” PA
www.plumbingafrica.co.za
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February 2019 Volume 24 I Number 12