Drone Technology
Data Collection Innovation in WestVirg inia ’ s Energy Market
JACOB DARRAH
Drones have become a popular , commercialized concept over the last several years . Everyone has seen aerial footage taken by a drone , knows someone who owns a drone or has heard about their many uses . However , drones — also known as unmanned aerial systems ( UAS )— play an important part in the engineering and field services industries , particularly in the energy sector .
These UAS consist of two pieces : an aerial vehicle and a sensor . The vehicles are continually evolving and have come a long way since early versions . With increasingly lighter builds , they can stay airborne longer and collect more data during each flight . The sensors mounted on the vehicle change based on the task at hand . The most common option is a high-resolution camera , which can be used for a variety of tasks , but other valuable options include light detection and ranging ( LiDAR ) sensors , multispectral sensors and leak detection sensors .
Over the last decade , the fast-paced innovation of this technology has helped shape the way the energy industry executes planning , maintenance and data collection . A significant benefit to this development is an increase in the industry ’ s safety , which is a continuous concern in the energy sector . Using UAS for data collection removes a large number of safety risks , meaning companies no longer need to put data collection crews in difficult terrain or hard-to-reach areas and can access active work sites entirely remotely .
Not only does this increase the safety of workers , but it creates a process that is inherently more efficient and accurate . Using an aerial vehicle removes the need for a person to physically go to every location that needs data collected , which can be thousands of points for a single project . Additionally , the information picked up by a UAS sensor is far more robust than that of on-the-ground surveying . A drone flight provides a dense point cloud that can have information collected from sites as little as one inch apart . This makes the space between data points much smaller , providing a larger quantity of information in a shorter timeframe .
58
WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE