Drone News & Articles

Drone videographers just got some new tools.  PolarPro has expanded their library of video editing solutions with Helios Cinematic Light Effects.

The Helios Cinematic Light Effects software includes 32 drag-and-drop lens flares, light leaks, leads and transitions. “These simple-to-use effects can easily be dropped into any video composition to help streamline post production workflow,” says PolarPro.  “With effects ranging from light leaks and lens flares to light transitions, Helios offers a variety of colors, styles and looks to that can easily fit the mood of any video edit.”

Retailing at about $30, the new software is available for any drone videographer – and as it is compatible with most video editing platforms (Adobe® products such as Premiere 9.0 or later, After Effects CC or later, as well as Apple® Final Cut Pro 7 or later, and the Avid Media Composer) the system is available to operators with a wide range of experience.  (PolarPro has compiled a video tutorial for beginners here.)

“Featuring 11 flare effects, eight organic light leaks, and 13 light leads/transitions, Helios offers a wide range of 4K elements that can quick help pilots and post production teams refine their video edits to a fine production quality,” says PolarPro.  The Helios Cinematic Light Effects have been optimized for the lens profiles of the Mavic Pro and Phantom Pro 4 and Advanced, and PolarPro is planning to expand on that library soon. “With the effects properly optimized for each drone’s native camera, editors can easily splice together footage from multiple flight platforms without concerns for distracting color shifts,” says the company.

For the first time, drones were used to inspect all 264 turbine blades across the 88 offshore locations at Sheringham Shoal wind farm

Sheringham Shoal, operated by Statoil, a key player in the UK’s offshore wind sector, partnered with Martek Aviation to carry out the inspections. Using 200 UAS, the drones took eight minutes each to collect the relevant data. This allowed Statoil to instantly assess the condition of their assets on site.

“Martek Aviation is a professional company providing world-class wind turbine inspection services,” says Dale Symonds, Senior Engineer at the Sheringham Shoal offshore wind. “The UAS high-resolution camera has allowed us to perform excellent quality inspections on all turbine blades providing us with confidence and clarity. The service has allowed us to become more efficient, safe and profitable with our wind turbine inspections moving forwards.

Due to the advancements in UAS technology, the challenges faced with traditional inspection methods are being transformed into a safer and more streamlined data collection process. Previously, blade turbine inspections were performed from the ground using a simple camera for visual inspections or by risky human rope access. The use of drones has removed the requirement to climb the turbine by flying from the 40-meter vessel.

The best real estate agents know that presentation is key in attracting serious buyers. And the bigger the property, the more ambitious the marketing plan needs to be. Today’s savvy buyers do their research online before they even pick up the phone to call an agent.

Any agent working to sell a luxury property makes significant upfront investments in professional photography in order to have the kind of “glamour shots” that attract buyers’ interest. The interiors may have looked beautiful, but other selling points, like landscaping, outdoor features or vast acreage, have historically been harder to capture. Some agents would hire helicopters to hover over properties in order to get aerial shots-- and choppers certainly aren't cheap.

Today, technology has made it possible to capture amazing Hi-Def images hiring a manned aircraft. You can create an immersive virtual experience that gives potential buyers the option to tour a property without ever leaving their house. Recent changes to rules governing the use of small unmanned aircrafts – or drones – have made it possible for real estate professionals to use them for photographic purposes.

Many hobbyists in the U.S. already fly drones. But that doesn’t mean you can just go out, buy a drone and start filming properties from the air. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) governs the use of drones for commercial purposes. And because the FAA is a federal agency, the rules are strict. So before you run out and spend $1,200 on a drone of your own, you need to educate yourself. 

Once you have obtained certification, there's a host of operational rules you must learn and observe. While drones can be flown indoors or outdoors to highlight all the best features of a property, they must be flown in daylight hours. There are insurance considerations and state and local privacy rules that must be observed; there are limitations on height and radius, and on speed. You must register your drone, and file a preflight plan.

And then, of course, you need to learn how to actually fly the drone — and how to get the best pictures possible while doing so.

With superior eyesight, swift agility and the gift of flight, aerial drones are proving better than humans in many forms of detailed data collection. These superpowers are driving drones’ interest and investment across a growing number of industries, including agriculture.

Greg Emerick (pictured), co-founder and executive vice president of business development at Sentera LLC, applies the efficiency of drones’ cutting-edge technology to the oldest industry on the planet, farming.

“We’ve taken the sensors that we build … and integrated them onto different DJI platforms. … We pull the data out, pull it into our software, do the analytics on it, and then push it into other analytics tools that are used for agricultural purposes,” said Emerick about the streamlined process drones and DJI afford Sentera. The company utilizes DJI’s software developer’s kit to fly its drones via a mobile app, making crop inspections easier, safer and more affordable than ever, according to Emerick.

Emerick spoke with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AirWorks 2017 event in Denver, Colorado. They discussed the impact of drones on agriculture and mused on where the technology may take the industry in the future.

Greater insights for improved crop health

Prior to the development of drone technology, agricultural inspection was based largely on sampling, often resulting in inaccurate readings that risked the health of the crop. Farm owners could calculate fertilizer, soil levels, precipitation and other aspects of their operation but lacked essential information about the status of their crop.

“What they need is this real-time opportunity to look at them … [to] identify what they might want to do, and then from there create an application,” Emerick said. Armed with drones and DJI’s software, Sentera’s tools can ensure all crops are accounted for and inform better business decisions, he explained.

Drone’s enable far more for Sentera than plant counts. Using a variety of cameras and other tools, Emerick and his team scan, detect and treat farms for any threat to the crop. “We’ll … identify the location of weeds in the field and then push that into other tools … that can … help improve the crop production,” he said.

Excited by the progress he’s seen so far, Emerick is confident the future will only bring new advancements to drone technology. “Tighter integration into the platforms themselves … and a lot more data,” he said, naming just a few items on his wish-list.

Efficiency is a high priority for Sentera as the company continues the work of improving agricultural processes and increasing food production for all. “That’s what gets us up every day,” Emerick concluded.

ELKO — The use unmanned aerial vehicles at mines is taking off in Northern Nevada as operators apply the technology to tasks such as surveying and inspections.

The Federal Aviation Administration made way for the commercial use of drones, such as work at mines, when it updated commercial operation rules for small UAVs effective August 2016. Instead of requiring a pilot’s license, the federal government allows an operator to pass an aeronautical knowledge test to be able to fly commercially under certain restrictions.

Drone-based businesses have since launched to answer the growing demand for drone equipment and services.

Pennsylvania-based Identified Technologies serves the SSR Mining Inc. Marigold Mine in Valmy by providing a drone and data-processing services. In January, the company began training its staff and started to work flights into its routine at the run-of-mine heap leach operation.

On a blue-sky day in early October, Marigold Mine Chief Surveyor Alan Clayson unpacked a tote containing a DJI-brand drone with four helicopter blades and coordinating equipment for a demonstration flight.

Watching was Identified Technologies CEO Dick Zhang, visiting the mine on a customer service call. Zhang started the business almost five years ago and got his start serving the construction industry.

“We’ve come so far. It’s so satisfying, so fulfilling,” Zhang said, explaining how his role at Marigold has morphed from trainer to spectator now that the mining staff is trained and certified.

Clayton and another employee earned their remote pilot certification through the FAA by completing an aeronautical knowledge test at an FAA-certified testing center. Marigold staff said they could have another person certified by the end of the year.

After the startup protocol, everyone stood back while Clayson launched the craft. It ascended with a buzzing sound like a mob of mosquitoes and stirred a low cloud of dust. Soon, the small flyer was a mere speck in the sky.

The drone automatically followed a line pattern according to the flight plan and captured data for about 14 minutes while Clayson monitored the object and tablet.

“Most of the magic of the process is after the flight,” Zhang said, describing his company’s data processing services.

At Marigold, the technology is used mainly for making topographic maps for reports and audits; taking detailed aerial photos of leach pads for solution application management; and inspecting slopes and high-walls in areas with limited access to search for tension cracks, settling and bench integrity.

Future uses at Marigold could include providing power infrastructure inspections, and creating multispectral and thermal maps to improve solution application management and detect hot spots in equipment.

In modern economics, it’s very common that seemingly unrelated events actually have a great deal of mutual influence. Today we’re going to look at one such example, as so insightfully explored by COMMERCIALCafé: drone technology and improved real estate methodology.

For more than a year now, drones under 55 pounds have been legally able to enter national airspace because of provisions made in the Small Unmanned Aircraft Rule from the FAA. What’s more, anyone can get a remote pilot’s license and be perfectly qualified to use a drone. People outside of real estate may not appreciate just how ubiquitous these unmanned aircraft have become in the industry, so this post will sum up some of these factors.

Marketing Properties.

If there’s a big new listing in your area of an impressive home, you can bet that there will be a video with lush drone footage providing impressive aerial shots of the property. This change in video perspective has given a new flavor to real estate marketing. We’ve even seen drone footage from inside large properties used in these videos. This is the new normal, and the possibilities will only increase as drone technology improves.

Inspections.

If you’ve had a house or other property inspected in the past year, there is a good chance that your inspector used a drone to get a close-up look at the state of the property’s room. Many home inspectors inspect only the parts of the house which are easily accessible. This means they won’t be climbing up on your room anytime soon. Drones make it possible to give you more information on the roof during the home inspection, which can potentially be the deciding factor in whether or not to actually buy the property.

Construction Monitoring.

It’s amazing to see a building come together in a time lapse video. It’s even better when there is aerial drone footage to boot. Drones allow you to see progress in great detail, allowing you to supervise construction in a more detailed way without having to get your hands so dirty. You won’t even have to set foot on the site if you don’t want to, instead relying on your drone to give you the information you need while you pilot it from a distance.

Maintenance.

Everyone needs to maintain their building once it’s purchased. Drones make this easy, especially if your building is more than one story tall. Many of the things that can go wrong with a building happen in high, hard to reach places. You may be afraid of heights or unable to find out who borrowed your ladder, but your drone can get anywhere you want to take a video of potential problems, giving you the information you need to make the necessary preventative maintenance or repair.

_{Oil and gas companies are using unmanned aircraft system (UAS) technology to improve safety and efficiency in a growing range of applications, from infrastructure and maintenance inspection to security, emergency response and environmental and regulatory compliance. Today’s UAS programs are supported by payloads including high-definition video equipment, high-resolution still cameras, thermal imaging cameras and emission sensors – and there are many ways, operationally and financially, to incorporate them into business processes. Numerous oil companies have demonstrated how UAS programs can improve safety while augmenting existing operations, and have also shown the value of supporting these programs with a comprehensive range of processes, procedures and management systems.} 

_{Examples of Successful Programs}

_{One of the most popular applications for UAS programs includes visual inspections of remote assets such as oil rigs. In one example, a major oil company set up a UAS program to identify the presence or absence of rig components or subcomponents – as well as any gross damage or deformation, including visible cracks, the extent of coating breakdown and variations from structural drawings. The unmanned, eight-pile production and compressor platform included a boat landing connected by a bridge, and featured two decks and elevation depths ranging from -97 feet to 10 feet (Figure 1). Many of the areas of interest were in hard-to-reach locations, as the image shows.}

_{Clearly, manual inspection of these rig elements would be both difficult and dangerous if it required sending someone down a ladder or out onto scaffolding. With a UAS program, people are removed from these dangerous situations. Additionally, inspections can be performed while the asset is live, thus reducing the length of costly shutdowns. A study of UAS use at one leading international exploration and production (E&P) company showed that these programs enable inspections to be completed 20 times more quickly than traditional rope-access techniques, which can take an average of eight weeks to complete when using human inspection teams. The direct costs of UAS programs are half those of human inspections – and UAS programs also eliminate other indirect costs associated with offshore bed space, standby boats and the transport of personnel to and from the rig by air or sea. The costs of helicopters, alone, can average as much as $2,500 an hour and up to $60,000 per flight.}

_{When UAVs are used for all initial visual and thermal inspections, personnel are only deployed for contact inspection and other advanced investigations, if required. This can sharply reduce the risk of death and injury in a workplace environment that, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), has a fatality rate seven times greater than that for professionals in other sectors. One rig operator that implemented a UAS program reported a reduction in injuries of greater than 10 percent as compared to the same period a year earlier when it used human inspections. The other benefit of removing humans from these inspections is that it is no longer necessary to shut down rig operations, which can cost an operator millions of dollars in lost production. Assuming a typical five-day shutdown during a traditional inspection, the operator might possibly lose 100,000 barrels in lost production at a cost of $40 to $50 per barrel.} 

_{In a typical rig survey example, a UAS could capture visual images of key elements including cellar underdecks, emergency shutdown valve (ESDV) platforms, conductors and guides, caissons and jacket legs. Coverage of a cellar underdeck would be enhanced by having the UAS aerially inspect it from several different angles, taking both close-up and standoff photos. An interim inspection report is generally provided midway through a project, highlighting immediate issues and general conditions, and a final report is submitted at the project’s completion. A typical inspection report encompasses all key elements across multiple elevation depths. In the example of an unmanned, eight-pile production and compressor platform, this would include performing topside, hull and structural critical inspection point (SCIP) surveys. A UAS would be used to take topside photos of the structure, along with video footage throughout the inspection. The UAS would also be used to image the structural and coating condition on the hull exterior and associated components, along with the coating condition and surface corrosion on all columns and other SCIPs. Figure 2 shows the video log of a typical report.}

_{The images in Figure 3 are among 1,900 visual images that were captured during a survey of a typical rig’s components and subcomponents. It shows a riser umbilical caisson platform to which access had been restricted because of storm damage. The images in Figure 3 show an 80 percent coating breakdown on the deck support leg, with surface rusting shown in the inset image.} 

_{The UAS survey identified numerous other issues, ranging from missing gratings and handrails to areas of moderate to heavy corrosion on jacket legs, horizontal bracing, conductors, and the welded connections in the areas between jacket legs and the underdeck and near discharge pipes. In the cellar underdeck steelwork, the survey showed that the primary member between two grid points displayed complete coating breakdown and surface corrosion, with exposed reinforcing mesh shown in the inset. This area would have been extremely difficult for a person to survey (Figure 4).}

_{One of the most difficult locations for human surveyors to observe is the flare and its supporting structure. This location is relatively easy for a UAS to survey, as shown in Figure 5. In this example, liquid staining has occurred, providing evidence of process fluid that may have been discharged during a blowdown or process interruption.} 

_{To view Figures please click on the link below}

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation last month announced it would release a fleet of 22 drones to help monitor ecosystem management, conservation and emergency response efforts across the state.

One of those drones was used in the Syracuse area last month.

The department recently used a drone to survey mudboils in the southern watershed of Onondaga Creek, known as the Tully Valley, said Benning DeLaMater, a DEC public information officer, in an email.

The mudboils discharge high levels of sediment into Onondaga Creek, which affects its water quality. Since Onondaga Creek is a major tributary that flows into Onondaga Lake, monitoring mudboil activity closely at its source is crucial, DeLaMater said.

Gary McPherson, an environmental engineer with the DEC, flew the drone over Onondaga Creek to monitor mudboils in mid-September.

The mudboils are relatively cool compared to the surface of the water, McPherson said. The drones aerially map the area to look for temperature differentiations that would indicate the presence of a mudboil.

Compared to previous methods, drones are a much more useful and convenient way to monitor a habitat aerially, McPherson added.

“The only way of doing this in the past was by aircraft, which was very cost prohibitive,” he said. “Drones are compact and can be flown much closer to the surface of whatever you are studying, which allows for greater accuracy in surveying.”

Several other drone monitoring missions have been completed in other parts of the state, according to a press release by the DEC.

The day after the announcement of the program, New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo sent three drones to assist the New York Power Authority with restoring power in Puerto Rico and various emergency response missions, according to the press release.

There are no official plans to deploy drones over Onondaga Lake as of yet, DeLaMater said. It may be possible, though, to use drones to map and document the lake’s habitat restoration efforts, he added.

According to new report available with Million Insights, The advantages such as efficient water usage, fertilizers and land, better productivity will drive the market of Agriculture drones. The various capabilities such as imaging capabilities, sensors, and better materials will lift the market.

The increasing venture funding rendered to a drone manufacturer is anticipated to drive the market

Agriculture drones is use of drones in farming that helps farmers to monitor crop growth and increase crop production. In 2015, the agriculture drone market was valued at USD 193.4 million globally. Agriculture drones are used for collecting high-quality data and its data processing tools are less expensive and easy to use. The use of advance technologies and its increasing awareness among farmers will propel the growth of market.

The advantages such as efficient water usage, fertilizers and land, better productivity will drive the market of Agriculture drones. The various capabilities such as imaging capabilities, sensors, and better materials will lift the market.

The hybrid agriculture drone is expected to portray the highest growth over the forecast period

The market share of Hybrid drones is expected to be highest by 2022. The drones takes snapshot of different sectors of field that provides crucial and important data regarding crop, soil and yields in order to assist in crop management. Agriculture drones are emerging as a lucrative sector due to its small size, low cost and easy use.

The UAV-based start-ups are booming due to its application in wide areas. The start-ups are focusing on providing hardware and software and services that will cover about 80% of market. The Universities, technical institute and different organizations are organizing various programs to provide guidance for operating UAV’s, which is expected to propel market. Government regulation and lack of trained pilot in some regions may act as barrier to market growth.

The market, based on products is fragmented into rotary blade, fixed wing and hybrid. The emerging need to carry heavy payloads will help fixed wing UAVs to dominate the industry over forecast period.

The capability of hybrid UAV’s such as covering long distance will help them to grow with a CAGR of 40% from 2016 to 2024. Compared to manned aircraft, the UAV’s are capable to monitor field areas with ease which will have positive impact on market growth.

The crop scouting application is projected to witness a significant growth over the projected period

The Application segment is divided onto Variable rate application, field mapping, crop scouting and others. In 2015, among these, the filed mapping segment dominated the business in terms of revenue. Farmers striving hard to increase productivity of crops by making use of advance technology is expected to drive field mapping Segment.

The drones are capable of spray fertilizers accurately without causing any problem can act as important factor in growth of Crop scouting segment in next seven years. In addition the development of Normalized Difference vegetation Index (NDVI) is expected to help crop scouting to contribute more in market. NVDI makes use of near-infrared sensor that is use to capture data that cannot be captured by human eye.

The Asia Pacific region is expected to witness a significant growth from 2016 to 2024

Asia Pacific agriculture drone industry will have a compelling growth among different regions over the forecast period. The emerging economies in these regions are constantly investing in R&D to make efficient and advanced drones. Different companies are developing economical and efficient UAV’s that has vast applications in farming sector.

The North American region will dominate the agriculture drone industry. The emerging need to increase productivity and trends of implementing UAV’s is anticipated to influence market growth. The need of precision farming has led farmers to use UAV’s in farming.

Deep underground, where ‘hi-vis’ figures and gargantuan machines toil in an ageless quest for humankind’s most precious metal, gold, there’s a new worker: a whirring, spider-like creature filming, mapping and analysing, unfazed by the constricted atmosphere and its many dangers.

This new machine – tiny against the giant crushers, haulers and crawlers – can fly and hover and even rise to work in normally unreachable cavernous stopes, all by itself. Its stereoscopic cameras are not just its tools, but also its eyes. It navigates, like us, by seeing.

The machine is a mining drone, as much at home in this subterranean space as it would be flying above the Earth. It represents a new age for geology and underground mining, and also a juncture in multidisciplinary research.

The scientist behind this drone, and others being tested in working gold mines in Victoria and Tasmania, Australia, is Associate Professor Steven Micklethwaite, a geologist with Monash University’s School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment. The drone, and the technology carried in its underbelly, is the work of a collaboration with other Monash specialists in robotic vision systems, artificial intelligence, information technologies (IT) and, of course, drone-building.

The core innovation the team is developing is the drone’s capacity to fly autonomously along a shaft or through a tunnel, and create, in real time, 3D models of its surrounds and geological maps.

“It guides itself with lasers and the same high-definition stereo video cameras it is using to create the 3D models,” Associate Professor Micklethwaite explains.

“But that’s just the hardware development. The other side is turning the imagery into useable information – for example, computing an instantaneous map that a geologist would otherwise spend days or months building up.”

The industry application covers the full suite of mining operations, from geology and resource assessment, through to monitoring the integrity and safety of an underground infrastructure.

Associate Professor Micklethwaite describes how the drone could arrive at the site of the most recent blast, photograph and map the exposed geology, and transmit or fly the data back to the surface for geologists to assess the resource from a 3D map just created: “From the orientation of the geological features exposed, a geologist can predict the nature of the deposit in the next section of rock,” he says.

In time, Associate Professor Micklethwaite says, the drones may alleviate the need for humans to even enter underground mines. Given the high costs and safety risks in putting people underground, any technology that negates this will boost mine economics and save lives.

He anticipates similar efficiency gains for geology through the introduction of artificial intelligence. “I might have several square kilometres of landscape on which I have to map all the faults and fractures or identify the different stratigraphic layers and measure their orientation. For me to do that at a five-millimetre resolution would take years. But now we can map with the drone, teach a computer what to look for and then propagate that learning through the rest of the data. All I have to do as a geologist is check the computer got it right, which gives me far more time to properly understand what the map is telling us.”

For Associate Professor Micklethwaite the technology and his research collaborations are reinventing the ancient science of geology: “My motivation for getting into geology was to understand earth processes; to see how rivers were changing, how valleys had eroded, to see rocks and understand the stories they had to tell about Earth evolution. But it all takes so long with standard techniques.

“So when cheap and available drone technology arrived I engaged with it very quickly, and from there a whole new

world of possibilities has opened up for earth sciences.”

Associate Professor Micklethwaite says the future for the technology is expansive. “It’s going to be applicable in so many areas … even forestry and bushfire management, for example. If we can build drones that can detect leaf structure and fine branch structure, we could be flying beneath trees measuring, for example, biomass build-up in areas otherwise too difficult to reach.