Drone indoor remote visual inspection
Inspection and maintenance of steel civil and technological structures are basic activities to ensure their safe and most effective operational life. Requirement/activities of inspection and maintenance are based on implemented Asset Integrity Management, or they can be defined by legislation. For example, in the Czech Republic in accordance with valid development law, the operator/owner is obliged to properly maintain the structure.
The owner/operator of a structure must, according to valid legislation, implement inspection and maintenance activities to ensure the structural and operational integrity of structures. As a clue for these activities they can use the ISO 13822 standard or the Czech ČSN 73 2604 standard. A lot of owners want to increase the operational reliability and maximize service life of their assets beyond legal requirements. To achieve these goals, they want to implement knowledge and procedures from other standards, such as API, EEMUA, ASME, EN, etc.
The cardinal and key method of inspection is visual inspection. This method is also very cost effective in comparison to other NDT methods. Our company provides both variants of visual inspection - direct or remote accordance with the EN 13018 standard. In cooperation with the Drony SIT company we perform indoor remote visual inspection using a special collision resilience drone, the ELIOS 2 from Swiss-based company Flyability. This drone was designed for indoor usage – for access to confined space where there is risk of collision with inspected structures/technology. Remote visual inspection is performed by analysis of image/video captured by 4K camera or thermal camera which is placed on the ELIOS 2 drone.
Process of visual inspections:
Captured images/videos during remote visual inspection are not the final result of our work. Results are conclusions on what is wrong or not. We always perform assessment of indicated flaws – we design procedures of repair or project other more advanced NDT methods. With our NDT partners we are able to carry out a detailed analysis of the structures.
Flyability ELIOS 2
ELIOS 2 is the second generation of special collision resilience drone for remote visual indoor inspections. This drone is designed for indoor usage which allows access to confined space where there is risk of collision with inspected structures/technology. A good example is a visual inspection of truss girders on roofs. The drone's anti-collision feature is ensured by a protective frame that is resilience to collision up to 5m/s. In comparison with the first ELIOS 1 version, the protective frame no longer rotates around, but is rigid. This is a bit of an advantage because it doesn’t block the cameras’ view. On the drone is a newly mounted ultra HD 4K camera with 3840 x 2160 resolution and a Lepton 3.5 Flir 160 x 120 thermal camera. ELIOS 2 has a new “Distance lock” function that assists a fixed constant distance from the inspected surface. The drone has a modified LED lighting system with an output of 10K lumens that can be partially switched off to adapt the lighting conditions to the inspection needs.
Remote visual inspection in inaccessible places without building of scaffold
The main reason for usage of drones to perform a remote visual inspection, is to save money and time that are required for a usual visual inspection. For example, when drones are used there is no requirement to build a scaffold, which is both time consuming and expensive.
Inspection of condition of coatings systems
The use of the professional ELIOS 2 drone, which has been specially developed for indoor remote visual inspection, is ideal for assessment of coating degradation in inaccessible parts of a structure. Accurate evaluation of coatings – classification of quantity and size of defects and of intensity of uniform changes in appearance according to EN ISO 4628 standard can be made from the recorded video on a suitable 4K monitor.
Drone indoor remote visual inspection application
Drone usage for indoor remote visual inspection of buildings, halls, technological equipment, collectors etc. is a very specific application. The main problem is a possible collision with the inspected object/structures. The other specific problem is that in most cases there are insufficient lighting conditions for the inspected parts of the structure. Therefore, it is necessary to use specially developed inspection equipment such as the ELIOS 2 collision resilience drone from Swiss company Flyability.