Vertical inspection planned in UgCS flight planning software (с) SPH Engineering
Useful tips / notes when performing vertical scans with drones Firstly, it is important to remember that GPS signal quality may de - crease when flying very close to a tall vertical building. Pilots should therefore always keep the drone RC in their hands and monitor the signal quality. Secondly, in relation to the point above, it’s important to keep the drone in visual line of sight (VLOS). Since a flight planning software like UgCS allows to plan vertical scans where the drone goes around the corner of a building, the pilot should always follow the drone in these cases and not fly BVLOS. Alternatively, a visual observer, who is in direct communication with the pilot, may be used. ALEXEY DOBROBOLSKY , Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer at SPH Engineering– SPH Engineering is a multiproduct drone software company and UAV integration services provider. Founded in 2013 in Latvia (EU) as a UAV mission planning and flight control start-up, the company has evolved from a developer of a single flagman product UgCS to a market leader of multiple drone solutions. Today the company has created a rich global customer and reseller network in 150+ countries while over 45 percent of partners are located in North America. Alexey Dobrobolsky is Chief Technical Officer, Member of The Board and Co-Founder at SPH Engineering. He has introduced a number of solutions recognized by the global market like the software to manage drone shows and drone-based industrial product lines. As of today he is responsible for strategy management and development. He likes to work a lot in a field to test SPH solutions in real life scenarios.
horizontal or vertical. Vertical is more efficient for taller objects while horizontal is better for longer buildings. The main parameter used when calculating the flight lines is the distance to the facade. The more accurately the flight is planned using polylines and maintaining a constant distance to the facade, the more consistent the ground sampling distance (GSD) of the end result will be. Next camera actions are added. This allows the camera to automatically trigger either by time (every X seconds) or by distance (every X meters). Camera attitude action is added as well, setting a desired angle. In cases when the structure is located on an uneven terrain, it is neces - sary for the flight planning software to be able to plan the mission according to the terrain elevation model. For example, in the UgCS software by default SRTM4 elevation data is used and it is possible to plan flights at a constant AGL (above ground level) altitude. Moreover, when doing centimeter-level precision flights very near to the side of a building, custom terrain elevation models imported from LiDAR scans can be used. For flight execution the planned route can be either executed from the desktop PC or downloaded offline on a mobile device or the drone’s smart controller so that the laptop does not need to be used in the field.
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csengineermag.com
July 2022
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