Description
An Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are aircrafts with no pilot on board. More commonly known as drones, they operate with varying degrees of autonomy. For instance, they can be remote controlled by a human operator from a ground station, or can be intermittently or fully autonomous enabled by on-board microcomputers and navigation technology. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the USA now refers to UAVs as Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) to reflect the complexity of these systems as they include ground stations and elements besides the air vehicles. Although UAVs were first adopted for military applications, their use is expanding to other areas such as surveillance, weather monitoring, and aerial photography. Within the construction industry, drones are already being used along with laser, infrared or other sensors to monitor construction activities and produce topographical surveys of the construction site. The falling costs in drone technology along with increased battery life and sophisticated levels of control are making it an increasingly practical alternative to current methods.
Applications to the Construction Industry
Mapping and monitoring a construction site is a challenging process that is needed throughout the project, beginning with familiarizing the architects with the site conditions to inform design, to monitoring activity during the construction process. This is particularly difficult because of the dynamic nature of construction projects, with many moving parts and jobs being performed changing frequently.
In the pre-construction phases of a project project, a drone can be equipped with additional sensing capabilities such as Light detection and Ranging (LiDAR) or photogrammetry technology. These can then derive the elevations of millions of points to create a point cloud, which is then turned to a 3D model, which simply wouldn’t be possible in conventional surveying methodologies that rely on sampling. UAV thus offers faster turnaround times and more detailed modeling of site topography. This would allow for an improved assessment of site conditions and risks and more informed design.
In the construction phase of a project, these same UAVs can automatically hover around the worksite, collecting imagery, to monitor work progress and quality, and compare it against project design and schedule. This would allow construction professionals to see where work has been complete and provide a more comprehensive picture of project progress, while also capturing safety issues. In the future, they are likely to be used as construction equipment that perform tasks at great heights, move building materials, and assemble parts. During the post-construction phase of a project, drones can be used to for inspection and site monitoring, with applications ranging from ensuring the integrity of the asset to checking for trespassing on sites.
Benefits and Barriers
The benefits of UAVs are dependent on what they are used for. In terms of surveying and monitoring, the promise of UAVs is that they can provide more accurate data for analysis at a much faster turnaround time than conventional methods. Research by the PWC Drone powered solution teams’ found that construction sites have been surveyed up to 20 times faster by drones than ground-based teams. Moreover, drones are beneficial to safety, as faults and risks on-site can be accurately monitored, and inspectors or surveyors would not to be physically present in dangerous sites. However, for commercial use of UAVs to take off, several barriers have to be overcome. Those include costs, privacy issues, safety of personnel and public, and the legal status to operate drones.
Other Industries
Film/Video
Related Technologies
Analytics for condition assessment
Reality capture/bim integration
Analytics for performance monitoring
News and References
Provide Feedback
Tell us what you think about this topic! Do you have something to add? More information about how it could be applied? Click the link below to submit feedback. We'd love to hear from you!
