Interesting project (Power Station UAV)

[Varelco]

Hello All,

I need your help.

I’ve been an assigned an interesting little project by one of my managers, I work in a CCGT Power Station and I’ve been tasked to get ourselves a ‘drone’ for inspecting various assets across the site, we have a couple of large storage tanks which do not have access to their tops, previously we had had somebody in with a quad to inspect them. This option is no longer available so it looks like we will be getting hold of our own. Finding a multirotor to fit the bill is simple enough but there is a twist... There is also a requirement to inspect the internals of large structures, in particular the front face inside our boilers, this provides quite a challenge for a number of reasons, for one they stand 90ft tall and about 26ft wide with a free space of about 20ft behind this face, so quite a tight space to navigate in, secondly there is no light… at all, thirdly they are large metal structures, I’m pretty sure this will have a big effect on radio and video signals transmitting through (and reflecting off) the steel walls of the boiler.

So with that in mind is this achievable? What am I looking at in terms of equipment needed and size? I am clued up with regards to helis and regularly flying them (including 3D) but multirotors are new territory for me, I know the anatomy of one but that’s about it.

It’s under the perception that I will be flying it, like I said previously I have been flying helis for over 5 years so im confident that with practise I can nail flying FPV but more importantly I understand that to fly a multirotor as a commercial operation you need a license, however seeing as this is strictly for use within the site perimeter and by an employee of the site will this be necessary?

In terms of cost I don’t have an endless budget but the equipment needs to be easily obtainable. To summarise it looks like I need:

A platform that can video the asset that needs inspecting (gimbal and video camera)
Cannot be excessively big 10-15 minutes of endurance
Low to no light capability (install bright LEDs across the front?)
FPV set up to view inside and around the larger structures

Thanks in advance,
Matt

[chrisleematt21]

The phantom 4 is pretty good, cheap, flights last 20 - 25mins depending on how you fly it, its small, a half decent camera and it pretty much fly's its self.
It has collision avoidance which I believe works inside.

You could always strap a battery on it and your own lights that way darkness wont be a problem.

The only additional equipment you would need is an ipad, you can use smart phones but they are a bit small for FPV.

I guess it depends on how high a quality image you need as well?

Do you need to zoom in to see tiny things?

It also has various other functions which may or may not be useful.

Or buy two different quads a larger one for external and a small one for internal rather than trying to get one to fit the bill, could be more options available that way.

[woodsta888]

Someone had a link on here about a year ago for drones developed that went inside collapsed building for rescue operations etc. the multirotor itself sat inside a plastic ball cage around the drone so that it bounced off obstacles but kept flying. They flew it FPV. From memory it was inspecting the internal walls of cooling towers too. Some footage from the drone going down corridors bounding off the walls.

The 1milion dollar's drone is the Gimball project

[Rob Barnes]

I saw this on linkedin a few weeks ago , if I can find it I will .

[Grumpy]

I work for an offshore oil company and we have been working with a company called Cyberhawk to develop a drone system for inspecting the internal of the oil storage tanks on our FPSO's (basically oil tankers with oil production plant on top). As I understand it we are the first to have done such inspection 'in anger'. 2.4Ghz wouldn't work inside the tanks so they had to use a hard wired system, which is a bit limiting, The tanks have to be well lit because control was purely visual, trying to survey in unlit tanks would be a show stopper unless they have some new technology up their sleeves. I think they are working on alternatives to the hard wire but it's not my project so I don't know much more than this. We are also supposed to be testing wall climbing robots to do surveying that demands contact survey methods.

Drop me a PM if you like, I'm not sure how much the guy working on this will want to share but I can ask....

Steve

[Rob Barnes]

Here we go :

Flyability — Safe Drones for Inaccesibles Places

[Rob Barnes]

https://youtu.be/s96Q2GXgoeE

[Mark_T]

Forget the Phantom 4, it will not come close to meeting the requirements you have, nor will any of the other 'hobby' drones.

You will need specialized kit for this task.

[Mylee]

Matt,

Me, me, me...........I'll help you

[Varelco]

Thanks for the input gents that flyability looks ideal! Ill drop them an email and get a quote, problem is because it's quite a unique product and within industry I'd imagine it's going to be expensive. Can use that concept though

Ian when are you next in? We'll talk.

[Varelco]

Interesting, despite clearly advertising inspecting the internals of structures it still uses 2.4ghz....

[Mylee]

Tomorrow mate, 2-10

[Grumpy]

Be careful..
A lot of the capabilities claims are based wishful thinking about future developments. I know for a fact that the company (whose name I won't mention) that is specifically named on the Flyability web site as being their partner in development of tank inspection dont currently have the capability to actually do it (or didn't a few months ago). I know this because i had a meeting with the owner of the company to discuss their capabilities quite recently.
Even the companies that have done such inspection in anger (Cyberhawk being the only one I know of) would not sell you the technology, they would only sell you the service. This technology simply isn't available as an off the shelf product.