Roads, bridges, railways, shipping centres, and airports are vital to the economy and to national security. But building this infrastructure is expensive, maintaining it is a challenge, and One of the biggest challenges facing infrastructure management is that structures typically require more upkeep and monitoring as they age. This means more inspections, repairs, renovations, and even rebuilds to meet new standards.
Drones are one of the few resources ready to take on this challenge today. Drones offer you a wide variety of benefits, but two stand ahead of the rest: artificial intelligence (AI) powered 3D modeling and thermal cameras.
AI 3D Modeling With Drones Speeds Up Infrastructure Management: Using advanced algorithms and an array of sensors, UAVs now have the power to autonomously inspect structures such as buildings, roads, and bridges. Before drones, these inspections were only accomplished by ground-based survey teams could take as long as several days. But now, UAV technology is so reliable that some states even allow pilots to fly their drones beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS).
The high-resolution images captured by drones produces survey-level accuracy and create digital twins. These 3D models are so precise that engineers and infrastructure specialists can remotely assess what potential repairs are needed.
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Drones Provide Better Thermal Inspection Options: Another excellent tool for infrastructure management is thermal cameras. These special optics are capable of providing you with valuable temperature data. Thermal images, particularly radiometric images, provide you with a great deal of information.
It’s just not practical for ground-based crews to survey an entire structure with a handheld device. For this reason, they’re forced to spot-check areas, leaving much of the structure unanalyzed. But drones equipped with thermal cameras quickly survey an entire bridge or building with little effort.
Once you’ve collected the temperature data, you can review it later for a complete understanding of temperature variations. From there, you’ll know what it says about the structure’s integrity.