Inspection drones have made inroads into a number of manufacturing, agricultural and service industries.
The UAVs are making significant improvements in the monitoring and inspection of oil and gas infrastructure. They offer a number of benefits and help organizations to improve their operations.
The inspection drones can do a wide variety of jobs, including inspecting the pipelines and other oil and gas facilities in remote locations.
One of the main benefits of drone based inspections is safety. The unmanned vehicles eliminates the need to send human workers to dangerous locations such as top of structures, confined or contaminated spaces. In addition, the operators can control the drones remotely without risking people going to the harsh or hostile environments.
Operators can control the drones remotely to perform comprehensive inspections in a wide variety of structures, including difficult to reach locations and confined spaces.
Attaching the appropriate sensors to the inspection drones allows them to collect a wide range of data from the structures. Photo and infrared cameras can take videos, photos and thermal images, while gas sensors can detect leaks.
The communication technologies allows the inspection drones to send data back to an operator in a field service vehicle or the company’s control room in real-time. This enables the maintenance personnel to promptly identify and respond to issues such as corrosion, loss of coatings, structure collapse, leakages, and others.
The devices are very effective in identifying problems before they lead to bigger issues and downtimes. This means that the maintenance personnel can fix the problems in good time and prevent leakages which often lead to accidents, fires, product loss and environment degradation.
Other than safety and real-time data, the inspection drones are less costly and quick to deploy unlike the traditional methods which require planning and mobilizing a number of resources. In addition, they can check on assets and report when there is vandalism or theft.