4 Ways Drones are Helping the Oil and Gas Industry

The Albatross UAV

With adoption rates on the rise, drones and are making a splash in the Oil and Gas sector, providing improved communications, safer work enviornments and more accurate data alll while saving companies both time and money. Below we discuss the primary ways, drones can streamline operations in the indsutry.

More Accurate Data

Drones are a versatile platform that can be outfitted with a wide range of cameras and sensors that can collect vital data in real time. Businesses can easily integrate digitized mapping information and other data from drone flights into analytical and AI solutions for advanced processing. For example, software solutions use topographical and geological data gathered by drones to create models that help identify promising oil and gas drill sites.

Not only do drones gather information more efficiently than human inspectors, the digital data enables employees to make better, data-driven decisions. This drastically reduces downtime, catches conflicts and issues faster, and helps keep your operation running smoothly.

Reduced Costs

Inspecting O&G infrastructure and gathering critical data with drones cost substantially less than traditional inspection methods that require ground crews or manned flights. Drones are tough birds and can withstand harsh temperatures and other conditions. They get much closer to infrastructure than a helicopter or airplane, providing better visuals and data. Drones also minimize downtime by avoiding the need to shut down operations for inspections and by catching leaks and other maintenance issues early, lowering remediation costs.

Drones enable employees to conduct inspection and monitoring tasks without exposing themselves to the typical dangers of O&G operations. As a result, work hours lost due to injuries decline, medical expenses and insurance costs shrink, and the number of workplace events reported to OSHA and other regulatory agencies drop.

Improved Safety

Manual infrastructure inspections are often dangerous. For example, inspectors at wells and offshore rigs must climb up and down ladders and along catwalks — and even use cranes or harnesses and rappelling equipment to reach equipment. Inspectors sometimes must work in close proximity to harmful chemicals and dangerous machinery.

Drones perform inspections without risking employee safety. They’re particularly useful for inspections after blowouts or natural disasters — or when sending a ground crew to a site may be difficult, costly or unsafe.

Superior Communications

The remote nature of oil and gas work often requires operators to communicate with workers on sites around the world. This can present a challenge to managers and engineers working from the headquarters and collaborating with the boots on the ground. But drones can make things easier. Workers on the ground can fly drones on their site and upload the data to the cloud where back office managers can review and coordinate further inspection or follow ups — all without leaving the desk chair. Using software such as DroneDeploy makes it easy for the back office to markup maps or drop in annotations in real time so that inspectors can check on pressure points, leaks, or other potential issues.

Check out www.appliedaeronautics.com to learn more about drone technology.

Original post via Drone Deploy

5 Ways Drones Will Revolutionize Agriculture

The Albatross UAV

In recent years, farms of all sizes have begun embracing more advanced strategies for streamlining their processes to increase output. Drone technology is a central figure of this technological revolution. The following are five ways that drones like the Albatross UAV can be used throughout the crop cycle:

1. Soil and field analysis: Drone’s can play a vital role in the daily life of the farm right from the onset of the crop cycle. When equipped with high-quality onboard sensors, they can produce precise 3-D maps of the farm. These maps can then be used to conduct early soil analysis as well as aid in the planning of seed planting patterns. Once crops are planted the data derived from drone imagery can be used for irrigation and nitrogen-level management.

2. Crop Monitoring: One of the biggest challenges that farms face is the sheer size of their vast properties. The challenges posed by this footprint is amplified by the increase in unpredictable weather conditions that can subsequently drive up maintenance costs and stall productivity. Drones allow for real-time monitoring that is far more accurate and cost-effective than previously used methods like satellite imagery. Platforms like the Albatross UAV, offer users custom tailored drone packages designed to monitor nutrients, moisture levels, and overall crop health.

 3. Crop spraying: Distance measuring equipment allows a drone to adjust it’s altitude as topography and geography change, thus avoiding collisions. This same onboard technology can be used to assist with the task of spraying crops. Drones can scan the ground and in real time modulate distance from the field to spray the correct amount of liquid. The result is increased efficiency as well as a reduction in the number of chemicals penetrating the groundwater. Experts believe that aerial spraying will allow this task to be completed five times faster than if done with traditional machinery.

4. Irrigation: Drones equipped with hyperspectral, multispectral, or thermal sensors can identify areas that require changes in irrigation. Once crops have started growing, these sensors can calculate their vegetation index, an indicator of health, by measuring the crop’s heat signature. 

5. Health assessment: By scanning crops with visible and Infrared (IR) light, drones can identify which plants may be infected by bacteria or fungus, helping to prevent disease from spreading to other crops. With Multispectral images, you can detect diseases and/or sickness before its even possible to identify it with a human eye, potentially amounting to substantial savings.

For more information on commercial drones, please visit www.appliedaeronautics.com.

Top 7 Uses for Drones in Security and Public Safety

1. Search and Rescue

When it comes to search and rescue missions, time is of the essence, with seconds being the difference between life and death. Unlike traditional manned aircraft, drones can be deployed quickly and easily, and cover huge swaths of land in mere minutes. Equipped with onboard sensors, they can easily spot missing persons, leading to speedy and successful recoveries.

2. Tactical Surveillance

UAVs provide a new and critical point of view for inspecting areas that may have otherwise been too risky or conspicuous to assess. In these cases, flying a drone overhead provides the opportunity to get a detailed picture of the scene below without compromising operator safety. For instance, they can provide high-level feedback on illegal border crossing, the smuggling of assets, and theft in industrial environments. They can also provide a live stream of detailed data back to the operator to provide personnel with real-time, actionable intel that they can then use to assess potential threats and strategize a response.

3. Maritime Defense

UAVs play an integral role in combating crime on our oceans. They can be used to monitor and analyze, nefarious vessel movements as well as track illegal fishing activity. The data provided by drone technology allows law enforcement to identify hazardous areas, determine potential assault locations and execute a more effective, targeted response to threats. 

4. Oil and Gas Security

The scope, scale and remote location of many oil and gas facilities create a uniquely challenging set or security concerns. For instance, the prevention of pipeline sabotage, theft, and illegal trafficking. Long-range drones allow for efficient real-time surveillance of large areas from a secure base station, thereby mitigating risk and reducing profit loss. 

5. Event Security

UAVs play an important role in security and safety at major events. This includes everything from crowd control and infrastructure security, to completing an initial security risk assessment and subsequently developing a unique security plan. In addition to providing a real-time aerial perspective, UAVs allow for rapid reaction and the visual documentation of sites leading to more effective future risk management and security planning.

6.  Traffic Management

Monitoring traffic patterns is necessary for providing a detailed blueprint of the use and performance of our road networks. The data collected from UAVs can be used to support safety, performance and maintenance efforts on our roads and bridges. At present, many state and local authorities utilize helicopters to achieve an aerial perspective, however, UAVs can provide a much more efficient and reliable alternative. Today’s long-range drones use waypoint navigation, which allows them to be programmed to fly along predetermined routes repetitively for up to the minute data collection. Unmanned aircraft are also significantly cheaper than helicopters, meaning they can be deployed more often, thus increasing the overall performance of the traffic monitoring operations.

7. Anti-poaching

Because poaching typically occurs in large parks and habitats, close, regular surveillance of these areas is quite difficult. Aerial surveillance via manned aircraft can be helpful in the fight against poaching, but with this comes high operating costs. A long-range surveillance drone is the perfect solution in these cases. Drones can be equipped with standard RGB cameras as well as thermal cameras and sniffers that allow them to detect poachers in even the most remote environments. Unmanned aircraft like the Albatross UAV from Applied Aeronautics can cover large areas at a fraction of the cost of a helicopter and can be kept on site for rapid deployment. Perhaps most importantly, drones like the Albatross, have a very low noise footprint, so they won’t disturb the animals or alert poachers to the presence of the drone.