CD Sept 2015 (Tarmac) - Drones in Construction

Drones in Construction

Julian Snape

Technovation Anglia

Droning On

A brief overview of

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – a.k.a. Drones

And their potential application in the Construction Industry

Technovation Anglia – Droning on

Julian Snape (Cert Ed) background

• Initially rained in fields of Cartography and Remote Sensing • Severn Trent Water Authority flood mapping – ground survey • Motor Gliders and Microlights – low cost air survey • Photography and pioneered near Infra Red • Apple Computers – Eastern Region from Cambridge • IT Manager Games and Publishing Industries • Futurologist – London Futurists 4,000 + members • Transpolitica – Cross-Party Think Tank and Lobby Organisation • Technovation Anglia – Disruptive Technology research and

integration network • Pilot, light aircraft and gliders


First we shot at them

De Havilland Queen Bee Drone with Winston Churchill It has been said that it was from the Queen Bee the word Drone came into common usage for UAVs


Then they shot at us!


WW1: 1917 Inventor Archibald Low and the remote controlled Ruston Proctor anti-Zeppelin Drone

Interwar: Navy and RAF Fairey IIIF and De Havilland Queen Bee Drones

WW2: Father of Drones, Reginald Denny a well known ex Actor, ex RFC observer, pilot and R/C aircraft enthusiast migrated to USA

Reginald Denny opened a R/C model hobby shop in Hollywood. In 1935 he demonstrated a prototype target drone, the RP-1, to the US Army. He then founded the Radioplane factory and manufactured fifteen thousand drones for the army during WWII

At the Radioplane factory in 1944 an Army publicity photographer David Conover saw technician Norma Jeane and thought she could become a model. She did, after changing her name to Marilyn Monroe. David Conover’s CO was Capt. Ronald Reagan, future President of the USA

The RAF test flying a land based Queen Bee Drone


Battlefield Drones

MQ-9 Reaper

By 15 January 2014, RAF Reapers had flown 54,000 flight hours in Afghanistan and dropped 459 guided weapons (now Iraq and Syria)

Black Hornet Reconnaissance Nano Drone for use by individual soldiers to scout the battlefield

As of 25 October 2013, the British Army had 324 Hornet Nanos in service


Now they might do something constructive

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) expenditures over the next 10 years are expected to total $91 billion, according to the Teal Group

• Surveillance • Mapping 2D and 3D • Delivery (DHL & Amazon) • Farming • Communications • Asset tracking • Archaeology • Life-saving • Policing –Taser-drones.


Drone configurations pros and cons

• Fixed wing – Stable, longer airborne, but no hover

• Land – Walking and rolling, limited access

• Water – Swimming and floating, single environment

• Swarm – Co-operative – in development

• Manned! – Strictly speaking not a Drone but using many of the technologies

• Multicopters – Stable, hover, low Airborne time


Sensor types – light weight

• High quality gimbal mounted stills cameras

• HD Video both streamed and recorded

• Near Infra Red • Far Infra Red - Thermal • LiDAR – High accuracy,

through vegetation • Other sensors, CO2, CO

sniffers etc


Stages of potential use in construction

• Pre-planning

• Job Site detailed survey and mapping

• Construction process monitoring

• Post build checks

• Sales and marketing


Multiple roles in construction

• Fast and low cost site survey and mapping

• Security – intrusion detection

• Safety – Lighting, medical

• Asset tracking - RFID

• Communications – WiFi extension

• Delivery – small items quickly


Site survey and mapping

Survey

• Choice of sensors depending on accuracy requirement

• Optical HD and GPS co-ordinate geo-tag mapping. Can get x,y,z accuracy down to 3cm

• LiDAR for stable, higher cm accuracy from up to 1,000’ and through vegetation to bare earth

Mapping Software

• Converts gps co-ordinates into 2D and 3D maps

• Plot and drafts quality images with software such as Pix4D, Agisoft PhotoScan and Virtual Surveyor


Security

Dynamic intrusion detection • Automated patrol with HD video

• Airborne CCTV real time and/or HD image capture

• Infra Red at night

• Deployment of intense light

Abnormally detection • Regular flight intervals map identified

and sensitive areas to identify any movement between over flights. Monitor structural movements, subsidence or even equipment lean.


Safety and medical

Medikit • Rapid dispatch of First Aid medical packs

to areas of a site that may be distant from the First Aid point either horizontally or vertically.

CPR • Lightweight defibrillator kits are now

available with remote assistance capability to fly out to any more seriously injured employees


Asset tracking

• In 2014 Age Steel, a United Arab Emirates (UAE) company used an RFID reader mounted on a small Drone and passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tags to track steel products, such as pipes and plates stored on-site

Source: http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?12209/3


Communications

• It may be possible to mount communication systems on Drones, such as Wifi extenders, to increase Wifi range and short term accessibility in complex sites

Delivery

• In a publicity stunt cans of CocaCola were delivered to construction workers in Singapore


Identified Technologies

Pittsburg USA based company pioneering automated Job Site Survey ‘Boomerang’ Drones

• Automated flight path

• Automated battery swap

• Data sent to Cloud for Analytics

• 100 Acre site mapped in 10 minutes


Sky Futures of Hayes, Middlesex

Oil Rig Inspection

• Offshore and Onshore

• Dual Control

• Pilot

• Camera operator

• HD, Video and Thermal


Benefits of Drones in construction

• Low cost relative to ground survey teams

• Can reach exposed, difficult and dangerous locations

• No longer necessary to have initial ground access to proposed site

• Rapid deployment and completion of mapping

• High quality imagery across spectrum with various sensor types


Current issues

• Legislative environment in flux

CAA (UK) and FAA (USA) March 2015 House of Lords Report

“Civilian Use of Drones in the EU”

• Time airborne

• Control – remote or automated?


Solutions

• Political lobbying for balanced legislation

• Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Systems Association

• Geo-locking for no fly zones (airports and other sensitive areas)

• Fuel cells for time in the air

• Standards need to be developed


The Future

Drones actually Building...?

Created as an installation for the FRAC Centre in Orléans, France in early 2012

Models a speculative construction system that integrating robotics, digital fabrication, engineering, and design. Small quadcopters lift 1,500 foam blocks into a complex cylindrical tower standing more than six meters high.


“Be part of the process to develop and propose

standards before they are enforced by others,

Which may increase the cost and complexity of

useful operations or curtail them completely”

Julian M. Snape

Technovation Anglia – Future proofing Your Business


See us about the

COMIT & Fiatech Drone Project Eye in the Sky 2015/2016

Drone R&D and Assessment Project

Technovation Anglia and The Hub Group