Drones for maintenance inspections

Published 2023-10-25 by Alvaro Oberon (a 4.7 minute read) | Back to the main page

Introduction

Drones are high in the coolness-factor ranking of tech applied to maintenance activities and thus more than deserve our attention! You probably own one and, if not, you probably will if these market size predictions turn out to be correct!

Drones are used in industrial applications when the conditions for technician's access are either difficult or unsafe or both. Unsurprisingly, inspections at height are the bread-and-butter use cases for these devices although some are also used in confined spaces as you will see below.

What follows is a list of the best drones that you can buy today that are especially suited for maintenance inspections and other professional applications. The notes below are intended as informational only to get you started and to satisfy your technical curiosity.

Flyability Elios 3

This drone is designed for internal inspections of boilers, pressure vessels, tanks and other confined spaces. The only one on this list with a collision-tolerant cage that protects it from impacts either due to your dreadful piloting ability or because the space is indeed tight and difficult to navigate through. This drone is equipped with a 4K camera, a thermal camera and a powerful LED lighting system that enables it to capture clear images in dark environments. With an IP rating of 44, it can be used with little concern for water splashes and dust. Price is around $7,300

DJI Matrice 300 RTK

Picture source: https://www.ferntechcommercial.co.nz/news/2020/11/30/matrice-300-asset-inspection (if you live in NZ, you can hire these guys to do the inspections for you).

From the most famous commercial drone manufacturer in the world, comes the Matrice 300. You're not going to get this big beast into many confined spaces due to size and it not being cage-protected - an exclusive of the Elios. It's still a versatile platform for external inspections of cell towers, stack exteriors, bridges and other structures. It has a long flight time of up to 55 minutes and a long range of up to 15 km. It supports multiple payloads, such as zoom cameras, thermal cameras and lidar sensors that can provide different types of data. Price is around $13,700

DJI Phantom 4 Pro v2.0

On a completely different price league and sporting the old, original drone design, this is a popular choice for roof inspections, as it has a high-resolution camera that can capture detailed images of roof tiles, shingles and gutters. It also has obstacle avoidance sensors that help it avoid collisions with trees, wires and other obstacles. It has a flight time of up to 30 minutes and a range of up to 7 km. This is a rather consumer-grade option with a lower price to match - it's around $1,599 - cheap, but you get what you pay for. Also, at this price and considering the general applications this is for (I can't find any explicit comment on a more durable, professional grade build for this drone), so you may be better off with some of the other commercial drones from DJI like the Air 2S which is about half the price and probably does the same thing.

Yuneec's H520

This is a professional grade device, specially designed for cell tower inspections, as it has a six-rotor design that provides stability and redundancy in windy conditions - although that can be said about the other options too, except for the phantom. One of its cool features is the retractable landing gear that allows for unobstructed 360-degree views. It supports various payloads, such as zoom cameras, thermal cameras and laser rangefinders. At $5,000 for the base unit (no additional payloads).

That's it!

Anything that has a controller like that is interesting and I want to have it. Unfortunately for me and for most people reading this article, there's really no use or it makes more sense to hire a contractor (that owns and operates the device) rather than buying one - most of us will have sporadic checks that would benefit or would only be possible with a drone but those actions do not really happen that often - too bad!

None of that means that we cannot marvel at the capabilities of these technologies though, and I hope that this article has given you some new information about a tech application that you may not have been too familiar with. We can dig deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of drone applications but I will leave that up to you.