Companies with
remote or distributed assets often carry out asset inspections by helicopter.
Alternatively, these inspections can be carried out on foot. Both options are
very time consuming, expensive and can carry a risk to personnel.UAVs (Unmanned
aerial vehicles or drones) promise in the future to reduce costs by automating
this process and recording inspection data for later use. Key to this is the
ability to fly a UAV safely beyond visual line of sight (BVLoS). Kinectrics has
developed this enabling technology with the Department of Transport along with
our partners.
This is an exciting
and rapidly developing area that will positively impact many areas of
distributed asset management. We are building an industrial use long-range
inspection platform through a partnership of equipment suppliers and
ex-military experience. This will improve inspection efficiency, reduce
maintenance costs, identify third party intrusions and find technical faults
such as overheating.