More and more, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), are being used across industries to improve overall productivity. This can happen implicitly, as in construction. Here, drones are integrated with existing systems to increase efficiency and thus reduce operating costs. In contrast, drone use in real estate directly drives sales through aerial footage used as a marketing tool.
The most important benefit of commercial drone use, however, is the way in which UAVs can improve safety standards across industries, namely as a tool of inspection, monitoring, and delivery.
While the most popular way in which drones are used for inspection is in insurance claim adjustment, creative thinkers at companies of all sorts are finding ways to use their drone’s eye for detail to make their work safer.
For example, drones are becoming more and more popular for use in the inspection of pipelines and oil rigs to ensure the integrity of these fuel drilling and delivery systems. UAVs are also well suited to aid in or completely replace manned surveys of future construction sites, agricultural maintenance and development.
What is most exciting is how drones are quickly becoming the first in deployment in emergency response and military operations. UAVs, outfitted with streaming capabilities and integrated with software capable of reporting the lay of the land can help these brave men and women mitigate risk.
A drone’s aptitude for increased safety of industry professionals has largely to do with its fundamental ability to fly and for that flight to be controlled remotely. Flight, and more importantly, flight that is initiated with great ease, exponentially increases the speed of various tasks and the associated systems within a given industry.
Regardless of your business, time is money. More importantly, when a company in a high risk industry has aerial imaging capabilities, dangerous manual methods, which can be very costly in liability and human capital, become obsolete.
Today drones are outfitted (at the very least, compatible) with all types of sensors. Sensor technology can be integrated with UAVs to report on the physical properties of an inspection site such as corrosion, chemical conditions, gas or liquid leaking, cracks, and more.
Using these tools, consistent monitoring can be done so that professionals are more aware of an issue, or of the potential for a hazard to present itself.
It is reasonable to theorize that when drones are applied to help manage safety, they are poised to kill jobs. For instance, in some industries, work that was once conducted by manned teams of professionals are being replaced by a single UAV.
The truth is, though, that aerial surveys and inspections cannot completely replace these manned teams. Rather, the two will work together.
When a drone remote is in the hand of a trained industry professional with years of practical inspection experience, the drone becomes an invaluable tool, capable of painting a more accurate picture of the environment in which humans will be working. In this way, manned operations like a construction build, for instance, are better prepared, more quickly put into action, and ultimately, safer for everyone involved.