Between the Poles

Geospatial technology innovation is transformative

Innovation in spatial technology is transforming some of the world’s most important economic sectors.  The world will need to spend $57 trillion on infrastructure through 2030 just to keep up with global GDP growth. To meet the world's future infrastructure needs, construction needs to be reinvented through a productivity revolution. Two spatial technologies, reality capture and building information modeling (BIM), are key to this transformation of construction. A series of two articles on the new spatial technologies that are transforming construction including hand-held scanners, single-photon laser scanning, SLAM for indoor navigation and autonomous UAVs, beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) UAVs, satellite images with 30 cm (about a foot) resolution, and daily digital images of the entire Earth landmass from satellites is appearing in Damage Prevention Professional.

Completely automated classification of 3D scans by next year ?

Today's 3D scanners are able to generate 3D models in which humans can easily recognize objects such as vegetation, ground, buildings, power transformers, utility poles and cables, and windows and doors.  Automating this process of classifying point clouds or meshes, also known as feature extraction, will enable automation of many currently time consuming workflows in many industries.  In a panel discusion at the SPAR3D 2017 conference this year Greg Bentley, CEO of Bentley Systems, alluded to a Bentley-Microsoft project to apply machine learning to classifying reality meshes and hinted that we might see fully classified reality meshes demonstrated at next year's joint SPAR3D + AEC ST conference in Anaheim.

One example where automating feature extraction would provide big benefits is automating vegetation management for transmission lines.  Periodic transmission line inspection is mandated for North American transmission lines by NERC.  It is currently carried out by helicopter-born LiDAR which is expensive and for that reason not done more often than is required by NERC.  Full automation, which is possible with beyond-visual-line-of-site (BVLOS) autonomous UAVs and automated feature extraction of lines, pylons, vegetation and ground, would dramatically reduce the cost of inspection and enable more frequent flyovers.  The major benefits would be lower costs and a reduction in the number and length of outages resulting from vegetation transmission line interactions.

The latest 3D scanners, which are capable of creating high precision photorealistic models of just about anything, from digital terrain models and cities to detailed models of cathedrals, are getting much more affordable and accessible.  The current lowest price point is about $400 to $450 for adding 3D scanning capability to a tablet.  In the future 3D scanning and imaging may simply be built into smart phones.  Automating feature extraction from the exponentially increasing volume of 3D data, whether point clouds or meshes, is going to grow in importance.

But automating feature recognition and extraction from a point cloud or mesh remains a challenge.  Researchers have attempted to use machines to recognize features in imagery ever since computers were able to manipulate and analyze raster data.  There are cases where imagery contains a restricted set of types of objects in a known environment which makes feature recognition simpler.  For example, identifying icebergs in satellite or overflight imagery of the North Atlantic.  As another example, in a refinery or a chemical plant most of the objects are pipes, structural steel, and ducts.  For this type or environment with well-defined geometrical objects, software such as Trimble RealWorks (TRW) can identify walls, floors and ceilings inside buildings and ground, buildings, vegetation, and curbs and gutters outside.  At SPAR3D it was announced that the latest version of TRW 10.3 can even resolve power lines, which is critical for automating vegetation management for transmission lines.

I have blogged about Indoor Reality who have developed technology that can track accurately the location and orientation (six degrees of freedom) of a backpack containing LIDAR and other sensors as the operator walks through a building going into rooms, halls, up and down stairs and into other human accessible spaces.  Software tools are provided to generate intelligent triangulated mesh surfaces.  The package includes analytical software tools for automatically generating floor plans, distinguishing rooms, identifying staircases, and identifying doors and windows, in fact, everything needed for a Revit model of the interior of the building.

But for general imagery automating feature extraction typically follows the Pareto principle - extracting 80% of the features is easy, but the remaining 20% is difficult and requires most of the effort.  Currently companies such as Clearedge offer specialized software, Edgewise, for classification of 3D imagery.  Trimble has licensed Edgewise from Clearedge for construction applications and it can be used to extract pipes, conduits, structural steel, ducts, structural concrete, walls, windows and doors from 3D scans.  But the current algorithms are not able to classify everything and the process remains semi-automated - Clearedge claims that in general Edgewise can speed up the process of feature extraction by 70 %.  I am looking forward with extreme interest to seeing fully classified reality meshes demonstrated, perhaps as early as next year's joint SPAR3D + AEC ST conference in Anaheim.

Autonomous UAVs using SLAM to navigate without GPS

I have just spent an incredible three days in Houston at the SPAR3D 2017 conference.  There is so much going on right now in the 3D world with several key technologies just coming to fruition and finding broad application in the real world. 

 

One of them is Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technology.  In 2012 a company called GeoSLAM, which was a joint venture with Australia's National Science Agency (CSIRO), began marketing a SLAM-based solution developed by CSIRO.  I blogged about a backpack solution for indoor mapping that Avideh Zakhor from the University of California Berkeley had developed for navigating inside a building, generating floor plans, distinguishing rooms, identifying staircases, texture mapping surfaces, identifying windows, finding heat sources such as computers and human occupants, identifying lights, and even estimating plug load lower consumption - all automatically.

 

At this year's SPAR3D conference Stefan Hrabar from CSIRO described a project he has been working on that combines autonomous navigation with LiDAR-based SLAM to enable drones to safely navigate autonomously without GNSS in areas with complex geometrical structures.  This enables missions that the UAV can do with no pilot intervention.  Some examples that have been implemented include rainforest surveys - looking for invasive species, telco (cell phone) tower inspection and mapping, construction site monitoring including inside buildings, and underground mine mapping, especially, vertical, hard to access shafts called stopes.  For example, Stefan showed a demonstration of telco tower mapping where the UAV was placed near a telco tower, a button pushed to initiate the flight, and the drone mapped the tower without any human intervention.

 

Hovermap is the CSIRO application that provides a SLAM-based 3D LiDAR mapping payload for small UAVs.  It provides omnidirectional collision avoidance, advanced autonomy, and the ability to operate in GNSS-denied areas.  Hovermap uses a rotating LiDAR to produce a virtual spherical shield around the UAV.  Real-time SLAM makes it possible for the drone to navigate in complex geometric environments  without GPS, while the on-board autonomy makes possible mission execution without human intervention.  Some aplications include construction site mapping (inside buildings and outside), underground mine mapping and transmission line mapping and monitoring.

Construction industry poised for rapid digitization

The CG/LA Infrastructure Leadership Forum in Montreal has provided a fascinating glimpse into what is happening around the world in infrastructure from a technology, financing, and business model perspective. . From 50,000 feet the big item is that the construction industry may be at the tipping point with respect to digitization.

PPP

Probably the highlight of the event is the success of PPP projects, especially in Canada.  About one quarter of major infrastructure projects in Canada are PPP.  In the U.S. the PPP model works well in some jurisdictions, for example, the Port Authority of New New York and New Jersey.  In some states PPP is illegal and even at the federal taxation level until recently there were tax regulations that hindered the adoption of the PPP model.  The presentations made clear that there are multiple PPP models.   Several projects in Latin America were looking at PPP alternatives that were better suited to their jurisdictions.  A conference attendee from Nigeria was clearly very interested in which of the PPP models were appropriate in his country.

Investment in infrastructure

Big numbers were on virtually every speaker's lips.  The Canadian Federal government intends to invest $180 billion over ten years in infrastructure, the Quebec government $87 billion, President Trump threw out $1 trillion over five years in a state of the union speech a few days ago, Boston Consulting Group has estimated that there is a spending gap of $1 trillion annually, and the ASCE estmates that US infrastructure requires an investment of $4 million just to make up for the lack of maintenance over the past decades. Some speakers made a convincing case that these estimates are overblown. Whatever the numbers there was a consensus that there is a very large need for investment in infrastructure. 

But infrastructure, while among the top ten priorities for Americans, is not up there with jobs and the economy.  The Boston Consulting Group estimates that there are 15.4 million jobs in the infrastructure industry.  On average these are better paying than the average blue collar job.  The BCG modeling suggests that $ 1 trillion invested in infrastructure could get this up to 19 to 20 million jobs.  To get attention infrastructure has to be about jobs.

The good news is that there was a consensus that there is a lot of money looking for infrastructure projects. One speaker estimated ten times as much money as projects to invest in.  The holdups appear to be:
1) Permitting - Few are willing to commit money to projects that don't have the requisite permitting in place.  In the U.S. that process requires on average 9.5 years, but can take up to 15 years.
2) Social licence - These days it is not enough to simply get the state, federal, presidential, US Army Corps of Engineers and other regulatory permits.  It is necessary to get a social licence which means actively seeking buyin from the community.  For example, the Plains and Eastern Tennessee transmission line project has been supported by the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations as well as local landowners and other stakeholders.  Sometimes opposition comes from unexpected sources.  Clean Line's several big transmission projects have sometimes been filed against by the local utilities companies whose service territory the line crosses.
3) Business case - Investors are looking for a low risk investment with a good return.  That means that benefits to various stakeholders have to be identified and stakeholders brought into the project to spread the risk and reduce it for any one participant.

A lot of this money is private from domestic and international sources.  Japan and Saudi Arabia were both mentioned as sources of money for infrastructure investment.  Canadian pension funds are active in investing in infrastructure internationally.  To attract private funding infrastructure projects will have to generate returns, and that will drive investment in technology to improve productivity.

U.S. infrastructure market

Another highlight of the conference was Dan Rule's presentation on the Trump Transition Team's recommendation for infrastructure development in the next four years, which I blogged about previously.

Interestingly what Trump decides to do with respect to infrastructure may not be all that important. In the U.S. the federal government is not by any measure the biggest player in the infrastructure market - it only represents about 10% of the market. The big player is local governments. Local government has enormous power to choose projects, raise money and borrow money. This local autonomy is baked into the Constitution. Local governments decide on infrastructure projects and then float (tax deductible) bond issues to finance them.  The muni bond market is $3.2 trillion and is the second largest debt market.  There is good news here as well. The majority of the bond issues at the local level to fund infrastructure projects are successful in raising the necessary money through rates.State governments are also big players in the infrastructure market.  One speaker recommended to vendors and consultants looking for opportunities in the U.S. to look for municipalities who had recently successfully floated bond issues or states that had increased the gas tax or counties that has implemented a sales tax. In some states the state government and local governments are collaborating to fix all bridges in need of rehabilitation rather than inefficient one-offs by individual municipalities and counties. 

Large infrastructure projects

There are some very innovative large infrastructure projects around the world that were profiled at the conference.  I was very impressed that the long-haul transmission business appears to be coming to life in the U.S.  This business is not being driven by the incumbent power utilities, but by new players like Clean Line.  Geospatial technology underpins transmission line siting, transportation, and increasingly horizontal construction as drones, scanners, 3D visualization and other digital technology transforms the construction industry.

Technology

From a technology perspective just about every speaker referred to the lack of progress on productivity in the construction industry. Engineering and construction are second from the bottom on the IT adoption chart. But Wipro, Booz Allen Hamilton, Aconex,  Jacobs, and other vendors and analyst McKinsey believe that the construction industry is poised for the digitization revolution.  Vendors are investing heavily in technology including artificial intelligence, digital modeling such as BIM and full lifecycle BIM or BIM++ as one speaker referred to it, machine learning, drones, neural networks, virtual reality, big data, analytics, automation and hyperautomation.

GIS has been widely used by utilities for years for automated mapping/facilities management, back office records management, asset management, transmission line siting, and more recently for design and construction, energy conservation, vegetation management, mobile workforce management (MWFM), and outage management (OMS). Now, utilities are integrating GIS with automated meter infrastructure (AMI) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. Intelligent design has crossed over from the office to the field in utilities, also enabled by the capabilities of GIS. Geospatial-related analytics (spatial analytics) is seen as one of the key aspects of success for electric utility operations in the smart grid era. Looking for patterns and correlations between different land, weather, terrain, assets, and other types of geodata will be increasingly important for utilities. Power-related analytics with geospatial components include network fault tracing, load flow analysis, Volt/VAR analysis, real-time disaster situational awareness, condition-based maintenance, and vegetation management.

As an example, PrecisionHawk is not only selling drone services but the geoanalytics to extract useful, actionable information. One of their targets is the construction industry and they intend to fit their solutions into existing workflows.  For example, a drone can collect aerial imagery of a stockpile, and the software provided by PrecisionHawk enables the volume of the stockpile to be calculated from the imagery without the user having to know much about drones, imagery, meshes or algorithms for calculating stockpile volumes.  PrecisionHawk also have an FAA permit for beyond-line-of-sight (BVLOS) drone flights. (I already blogged about the pilot flights that Xcel Energy also has an FAA permit for.) This suggests the next step will be drone data collection and geospatial analytical applications based on this data for linear construction projects.

New rules for UAV operation by electric power utilities including beyond visual line of sight

New rules for commercially operating UAVs in the U.S. have been published by the FAA as Part 107 of the Federal Aviation Regulations.  These cover commercial uses of drones weighing less than 55 pounds.  First and foremost the rules requires that the UAV be kept within unaided sight.  However,  you can request a waiver of most operational restrictions if you can show that your proposed operation can be conducted safely.  As I blogged a year ago Xcel Energy obtained a waiver to fly UAVs for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations.  Furthermore on July 15, 2016, President Obama signed the FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016. The 2016 Act requires the FAA to establish a process to allow certain UAV operations related to utilities, pipelines, and oil and gas production to be conducted beyond the visual line of sight (bvlos) of the operator and either in the daytime or nighttime.

The maximum speed is 87 knots and you can’t fly a small UAV over people who are not directly participating in the operation.  But also interestingly, operations are allowed from a moving vehicle if flying over a sparsely populated area.  Since transmission lines traverse sparsely populated corridors, utilities are now using UAVs piloted from moving vehicles for vegetation management for transmission lines.

Secondly, to operate a small UAV under Part 107, you need a remote pilot airman certificate with a small UAV rating.  The drone itself does not have to be registered with the FAA.  The maximum allowable altitude is 400 feet above the ground.  But interestingly it can fly higher if the drone remains within 400 feet of a structure. This allows drones to be used on construction sites of tall structures, for example.

Tree contacts account for 30% of outages in North America.  For example, trees caused the 2003 blackout of the Northeast. The new regulations mandated in the 2016 Act would enable low cost, fully automated scanning of transmission lines for vegetation management as required by NERC (NERC FAC-003-3).  By combining LiDAR scanning on a UAV platform with automated extraction of transmission lines spans, pylons and vegetation and identification of vegetation encroachment risks, it is now conceivable that in the near-future outages due to vegetation interaction with transmission lines can be dramatically reduced because scanning is becoming much less expensive.

HxGN Live: Hyper-spectral camera mounted on a UAV for precision agriculture and other applications

The typical multi-spectral camera used on satellites and airborne platforms captures three or four bands - typically the Landsat bands: green, red and near-infrared.   But hyperspectral cameras can capture 270 bands and are light enough to be mounted on a UAV.  At the annual Hexagon conference HxGN Live in Anaheim, Headwall Photonics gave an overview of the capabilities and advantages of hyper-spectral remote sensing.  Headwall and Leica Geosystems have partnered to offer a complete UAV-based hyper-spectral package which includes the Aibotix X6, Headwall hyper-spectral camera, storage, IMU/GPS, and software. 

A hyper-spectral camera passes the light it captures through a diffraction prism that breaks the light into a spectrum that ranges from infrared through visible to ultraviolet.  The Headwall camera records 270 bands ranging from the infrared through the visible spectrum. This broad spectrum allows the chemical composition of materials to be detected.  Spectral fingerprints can be defined based on chemical composition which enables detection of different species of trees, stages of crop development, disease incidence in crops, specific chemical compounds in mining tailings, and many other materials.  The Headwall camera can capture up to 300 frames per sec.  That generates a lot of data.  The key to extracting information from this volume of imagery is spatial analytics software which is part of the package.

The Headwall Leica Geosystems package is an integrated multi-rotor UAV and visible and near infrared (VNIR) hyper-spectral imaging system with software control.  It includes Headwall’s Nano-Hyperspec VNIR sensor with the Leica-Geosystems Aibot X6 multi-rotor UAV. The Nano-Hyperspec VNIR Sensor captures bands in the wave length range 400-1000 nanometers (nm) with a 12 bit pixel and a maximum frame rate of 300 Hz.  It also includes 480GB of on-board storage and an attached GPS/IMU. 480 GB corresponds to about 130 minutes of imagery at 100 fps.

Typical applications of hyper-spectral imagery are
precision agriculture, mineral exploration, and civil engineering.  Specific examples of the application of the technology include marijuana plant detection, crop health monitoring, citrus species mapping, invasive species monitoring, growth cycle and monitoring of crop yield, mine tailings monitoring, storage tank leakage detection, environmental monitoring, disaster monitoring, and mapping urban areas. 

A fascinating example is monitoring crop health where a scan of a field shows areas where the plants are not doing well.  This enables the selective application of fertilizer to only those areas where it is required.  Similarly a hyper-spectral scan reveals areas of insect infestation, which enables the selective application of insecticide.  Another application that would interest grape growers in the wine industry is using hyper-spectral imaging to identify and monitor leaf roll virus infestations.

Hyper-spectral imaging can also be used in an urban environment roof type mapping, insurance assessments, identifying types of road and monitoring road conditions, monitoring tree conditions in urban forests, and for urbanflash flood and disaster preparation and monitoring.

The key differentiator of hysper-spectral imaging is much greater precision in recognizing specific chemical compounds whether in plants, rocks, mine tailings, or urban environments.  However, the price is managing a much greater volume of data. Spatial analytics is key to extracting information from the huge volume of data collected in the field.

HxGN Live: 3D underground utility mapping, indoor mapping, UAVs and utility solutions

Last week I had the opportunity to present at the annual Hexagon conference HxGN Live in Anaheim. Hexagon is a rapidly growing company with broad technology reach with core strengths in geospatial surveying and laser scanning technology (Leica Geosystems), UAVs,  software GIS systems for network engineering, network operations, and operations and maintenance of utilities (Intergraph),  design and operation of nuclear power plants (Integraph) and enterprise management of large scale construction projects among other technologies and solutions.

Underground utility mapping

Underground utility conflicts and relocations are the number one cause for project delays during road construction. In 2005 Hexagon acquired UK-based Cable Detection.  Since then Leica Geosystems has offered both electromagnetic and ground penetrating radar hardware and software for detecting and mapping underground utilities.  At HxGN Live this year one of the exciting technology highlights was the Pegasus: Stream, which combines a Leica Pegasus: Two mobile mapping device incorporating laser scanners, optical cameras and GNSS receivers and an IDS Stream EM ground penetrating radar (GPR) array.  I first saw this towable combined above and below surface scanner at Geo Business in London.  According to Stuart Woods, Leica Geosystems Vice-President of Mobile Mapping, Hexagon has worked with IDS for years and is in the process of acquiring IDS' GeoRadar division, which developed and manufactures the Stream array among other radar technology.  This advance in technology puts Hexagon in the forefront of underground utility detection and mapping.

Indoor mapping

The other major hardware highlight of this year's HxGN LIve was the Pegasus Backpack.  This is a wearable reality capture platform that collects data indoors, outdoors and underground.  Klaas de Weerd, COO of Prisma Van Steenis, Prisma Groep, reported the experience that his team in mapping structures in the Netherlands.  Among other structures they mapped the Eye Film Institute in Amsterdam inside and out.  Leica mobile, P20 and P40 scanners were used outside, and the Backpack was used inside and on the roof.

Slope instability detection and monitoring

Enrico Boi, of the Georadar Division of IDS, reported on several applications using interferometric radar to detect slope deformation.   Slope failures are complicated and hard to predict, which is the reason radar is important.  For example, the I-70 through the Rockies is subject to rockfalls especially in the Glenwood Canyon in Colorado.  IDS Interferometric Radar (IBIS) equipment was installed across the Canyon to identify the location of slope instabilities which then could then be stabilized to prevent rockfalls.

Laser scanning during construction

Fokke Broersma of Arcadis NL (Arcadis is also melding geospatial and BIM in construction.) reported on how his company, which is committed to using BIM throughout the construction life cycle, uses laser scanning in conjunction with BIM.  One of the projects he described was the New Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam where laser scanning was used for capturing the existing structure prior to construction, then for as-builts after construction. 

In a related software product Hexagon at HxGN announced the release of HxGN Smart Build.  Smart Build is a cloud-based solution for large scale construction projects that integrates BIM models, point clouds, and as-built measurements to monitor construction progress and identify deviations from plan.

Opening electric network data

Adrienne Behan of ESB, an Irish energy company, described how her company manages its 2 million wood poles.  Their GIS provides multiple views into a single network model which feeds into the outage management system.  It also interfaces to other critical business systems.  Any changes to the network are available to business users of the system within 24 hours.  This is remarkable among utilities where backlogs often result in the network model being months even years out of date.

Mobile sensor platform robot

A highlight of President of Hexagon Safety and Infrastructure Steve Cost's keynote was a product of Hexagon SI's partnership with Gamma 2 Robotics.  The robot that came on stage is a mobile sensor platform.  One application of the product is a security patrol robot branded RAMSEE which can patrol autonomously providing real-time data on intruders, motion, heat, fire, smoke, gas and more.

UAVs

There were several UAVs on display at HxGN.  The one I blogged about several years ago, about the time that Hexagon acquired the German company that had developed it, is the Aibotix.  The Aibotix X6 has turned out to be a very stable platform capable of carrying a variety of sensors.  It is used primarily for industrial inspection such as transmission pylons, dams, bridges, and other structures.  It can hover, the camera or other sensor can be held below or above the frame, it can fly a path guided by GPS even in windy conditions and has fully automated takeoff and landing capabilities.

Historical building preservation Palazzo dei Normanni in Palermo

One of the outstanding examples of using scanning technology to record and preserve information about historical buildings was presented by Italian company Technoart.  The Palazzo dei Normanni in Palermo, Sicily is an incredible structure with an intriguing multi-cultural history.  The first building was built by the Arabs who occupied Sicily in the 9th,10th and 11th centuries.  The Normans conquered Sicily in 1072 and made Palermo the capital of their kingdom. The Norman kings built upon the former Arabian palace. In 1132 Roger II, famous for sponsoring one of the earliest maps of the world based on Arab and Greek sources by Muhammad al-Idrisi (نزهة المشتاق في اختراق الآفاق‎‎,Tabula Rogeriana, Book of Roger), added the incredible Cappella Palatina.  The laser and optical scan using a Pegasus One by Technoart resulted in a point cloud with optical imagery that with the aid of gaming software allows users to virtually walk through the palace and the Palatine Chapel and explore the structure including the gorgeous frescos in detail. 

Background

Over the past 16 years, Hexagon has evolved from an auto parts and industrial measurement (metrology) hardware provider in Sweden to an international hardware and software solutions provider with annual revenue of € 3 billion and remarkably an operating margin of 23%.  It operates in the agriculture, geospatial, geosystems, manufacturing intelligence (metrology), mining, positioning intelligence, process power and marine, and safety and infrastructure sectors.  Among the many acquisitions it has acquired in the last decade are widely known Leica Geosystems (was Wild), Intergraph and Erdas.  It has expanded from industrial metrology to include geospatial sensors including Leica total stations and laser scanners; and software-centric enterprise geospatial solutions.  Its industrial enterprise solutions include industrial metrology hardware and software targeting optimizing manufacturing processes.  It has acquired software for designing, constructing and operating industrial plants and offshore facilities.  

GeoBuiz Summit April 26-27 includes construction, utilities, UAVs and cubesats

GeoBuiz Summit is an innovative conference that brings together key industry innovators and leaders to discuss and share knowledge and experience about the evolving technology trends, market behavior, and business models in the geospatial community including vertical markets such as construction and utilities.

Some of the themes in this year's conference include

• Geospatial Technology Trends and Business Models
  • Includes Sanjay Kumar, CEO, Geospatial Media;  Bryn Fosburgh, Vice President, Trimble;   Bradley Skelton, Chief Technology Officer, Hexagon Geospatial; Walter Scott, Founder and CTO, DigitalGlobe; and Bhupinder Singh, Chief Product Officer, Bentley
• BIM: Empowering Infrastructure lifecycle
  • Includes Roger Grant, National Institute of Building Sciences and Tracy McLane, Bechtel Infrastructure and moderated by Deke Smith, buildingSmart
• UTILITIES: Critical Infrastructure Operations and Management
  • Joel Campbell, Avineon; Peter Batty, Ubisense; Geoff Zeiss, Between the Poles; Matthew Thomas, NovaraGeo and president-elect of GITA; Elizabeth Z. Bialek, East Bay Municipal Utility District; Ramzi K. Bannura, AGSI USA; Dr. Henk Von Riessen, Wade Inc (John Deere); and Ben Mallen, Trimble
• EARTH OBSERVATION: Innovation and Socio Economic Benefits
  • Includes Rich Leshner, Planet Labs and John Fenvick, Google (Skybox Imaging)
• UAVs Technology, Applications and Policies
• Includes Dan Morgan, Chief Data officer, U.S. Department of Transportation
• Geospatial for Internal Security & Emergency
• Includes Michael Roosa, Senior Policy Advisor, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Department of Justice

DistribuTECH2016: Dramatically cutting utility costs with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flying beyond visual line of sight

If you would ask me among all the new technologies on display here and at other events which will likely dramatically reduce the bottom line of utilities in the transmission business I would say unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones.  For example, every utility which has transmission lines spends large sums on overflying, typically with very expensive helicopter flights, transmission lines for vegetation management to monitor the trees to prevent them from interfering with transmissions lines.  If instead this could be done with much less expensive UAV flights, the savings would be huge. But right now this is not possible, because commercial operation of UAVs is only allowed by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) with visual line of sight (VLOS) rules.

 

The potential ROI of using UAVs for vegetation monitoring are expected to be sizable, but this requires the FAA to change regulations to permit operating of UAVs with beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) rules.  Today at DistribuTECH2016 Eileen Lockhart of Xcel Energy with partners Environmental Consultants Inc and Flot Systems gave a presentation that showed just how close we are to UAVs operating under BVLOS rules becoming a commercial reality for electric power utilities.

 

Xcel Energy, which has electric and gas assets in eight states, is the fourth largest utility in the U.S.  They have partnered with EEI, EPRI, INL and others in the utility sector to show the way in the application of UAVs in the utility sector.   This includes working with the FAA to push forward the practical application of UAVs in the utility sector.  Their objectives are improved safety for utility employees and the public, reducing risk to and improving reliability of the grid, and reducing the cost of operating and maintaining grid infrastructure.  The technologies involved include GIS and geospatial analytics in addition to the UAVs themselves.  Expected sources of major savings are reducing the need for expensive helicopters and plane flights and the time utility employees have to spend in the field.

 

Xcel launched their UAV Proof of Concept project in 2015 with seven UAV missions in transmission, gas operations, energy supply, and electricty distribution.

• Transmission line and tower inspections
• Substation facility rating data collection
• Pipeline bridge and river crossings inspections
• High pressure pipeline inspections
• Coal/ash storage inventory (volumetric)
• Wind turbine blade inspections
• Storm damage assessment

Just last week (Feb 3, 2016) Xcel with its partners completed the first beyond visual line of sight mission with UAV flights over 20 miles of transmission lines.  They are convinced that BVLOS flights will become a commercial reality in the near future.   The UAV flights will not  be flown by Xcel itself but by contractors such as Flot Systems operating with FAA licences.  Xcel has not yet calculated ROIs for the applications using UAVs, but plan to do so soon.

Commercial operation of UAVs beyond-line-of-sight coming soon

In general the operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for commercial purposes is illegal in the U.S. although this is changing.  In Canada regulation of UAVs is different.  You can fly a UAV that weighs less than 25 kg for work or research  without permission.  However, there are severe restrictions.  You must have at least $100,000 liability insurance, keep your UAV in direct line of sight, always fly during daylight and in good weather (no clouds, snow or icy conditions), avoid flying close to airports, in populated areas or near moving vehicles, and fly below 90 meters.  The operator must be trained to understand airspace classification and structure, weather and notice to airmen (NOTAM) reporting services, aeronautical charts and relevant sections of the Canadian Aviation Regulations.  To relax any of these restrictions, you will have to apply to Transport Canada for a Special Flight Operations Certificate which will require 20 working days to be issued.  Transport Canada has issued thousands of these since 2000.

But this is changing.  Today Ian Glenn, founder and CEO/CTO of ING Robotic Aviation, gave an extremely knowledgeable talk about commercial UAV operation in Canada current and future.  He expects that within the next 12 months, legislation will be introduced that will significantly relax the current restrictive regulation of the commercial operation of UAVs without a Special Flight Operations Certificate.

The next step will be relaxing the line-of-sight restriction.  Ian's perspective is that the key to commercial beyond-line-of-sight UAV operation will be equipping UAVs with automatic dependent surveillance – broadcast (ADS–B).  An aircraft equipped ADS–B determines its position via satellite navigation and periodically broadcasts it, so that it can be tracked. The information can be received by air traffic control ground stations and by other aircraft, which provides situational awareness and allows self separation without ground control intervention. ADS–B is automatic -  it requires no pilot or external input - so it can be included on a UAV.  The cost of equipping an aircraft with ADS-B has come down and is currently on the order of $1000.  This could mean that commercial operation of UAVs equipped with ADS-B will come to Canada sooner because Canada is already using ADS-B for Air Traffic Control. (It is part of the US Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen)).  Ian suggested that we could see commercial beyond-line-of-sight operation of UAVs equipped with ADS-B within Canada in the next few years.  That will dramatically open up the range of applications for commercial UAVs.