# Autonomous UAV Based Monitoring A Win for Asset Inspection

- Event: NestGen ’22
- Published: March 3, 2022
- Length: 29:42
- Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/fy52PqpH-C8/

> The transcript of a recorded NestGen session, for reading or for use with an AI tool. It comes from the video's
> captions; automatic captions can mishear names and terms.

## About this session

Massive, high-value assets are high-maintenance sites. If only there were a system that could help with the 24x7 monitoring they require!

## Transcript

**[0:11]** hello everybody hope you are joining us from the keynote session and you enjoyed that session really good uh we're just waiting for people to join more and we'll get started with the session we already have marcelo joining us from argentina we're gonna talk about and kickstart the session give us few minutes uh as the audience uh leaves the keynote and joins us here by the way uh welcome to this station technical session about a technical inspection with drones uh let me try to put the presentation right now let me just uh quickly introduce you I think we should kick off sure I should join in a bit so of course yeah thank you everybody who is listening to us right now uh let's talk about drone inspections so the whole drone inspection and monitoring

**[1:11]** market is again really huge drones are the go-to tool for doing inspection monitoring of oil and gas power plants and whatnot the industry itself is projected to grow from like a 9.1 billion dollar industry in 2021 to a 33.6 billion dollar industry in 2013 so at a cagr or 15.7 percent from 2021 to 2030 that's a huge charm north america south america estimated his mission is to account for the largest share of the drone inspection and today we have uh marcelo joining us from argentina to talk more about this uh we know that these sites are really massive high value even shutting them down it could be a few hundred thousand or million dollars of loss so they really require 24 cross seven monitoring and uh of course we today lack those resources under not where now we have solutions like doing the boxes which could be deployed

**[2:13]** for automated inspection as well as monitoring so now we have a marcelo from papa energia which is the largest independent energy company with participation in the electricity and oil and gas value chain bomba has been deploying bib systems across their power plants for inspection as well as security the inspection team uses different uh docking stations uh to do uh monitoring of the plans maintenance during the daytime and in the night time they use the same devices for security so that is where they've been trying the systems and now looking to scale this across their site marcelo who is our speaker today is responsible for r d in the ita area for the company his job is to analyze and develop emerging technologies and adapt them to the business needs in his company with more than 30 years of experience in the iit area he began with the industrial drones uh program in pampa in 2017 and developing pilots and procedures for inspection survey analysis as well as surveillance stars at the company's plans so

**[3:15]** marshall is certified drone pilot and coordinates with the team for the internal fleet which currently consists of nine drones and pilots but now they're deploying automated systems uh there for fully automated inspections as well as security okay thank you so much itself for the introduction let me try to share the presentation okay can you see it okay well um hello everybody to this technical session uh as the challenge says before my name is marcelo I work in I.t department of open arkhia and before we begin to to to talk about drones let me talk a little bit about the pampanel here what we make uh pampa is the first pivot power generator in the country and sixth gas producer in argentina we have the about more than 85 market share in petrochemical products

**[4:23]** uh we have uh several businesses all of them about the energy production in the electricity value chain we have the generation part we produce more than five thousand megawatts across nine thermal three hydropower and three wind farms installations in the transmission of business we go control a company named transcendent that operate more uh 20 000 kilometers of high voltage lines and in distribution we had one company named elenor that actually was sold out we we lived that business but until last year we supplies more than 3.2 million clients across the net in the

**[5:23]** gas value chain the natural gas value chain we have several business one of them cmp what production uh more of a fighter fork k barrels of oil per per day from that 90 percent disgust in the middle stream we go control another company named tgs but that will praise more than 9000 kilometers of gas pipelines and process 1 million tons of natural gas liquid natural gas and in the downstream business we have petrochemical plants he cooperate with another company that rules this this business named refiner okay we had we begin began our drones operations from 2097

**[6:26]** and the we went with this small plane from a firm named a flight sensefly that name is ev and we used it mainly for a photogrammetry as you probably know the photogrammetry techniques is used to to cover a big extension of land and takes a lot of photographs from land and then we use a software to show in the photographs and make a photograph bigger that covers the the whole area of interest as you can see in the in the photo of the of the at the right a one of those processes and in order to do that you have to program the the plane of the drone with the area you want to cover with the quality of photo you pretend

**[7:29]** and later that the the system makes the fly plan and you just need to launch the drone and they make this pattern you can see in the photo and take the photo in each point where you have a waypoint after that you recover the photos and a post processing program makes the the complete photo of the big area that was the first of uh the kind of inspection we make and after that um we begin to to see that the drones can be used in another kind of works so we begin to make some classification of the type of work we can do with a drone we separate the the type of work in three three types

**[8:30]** those that can be periodic I mean you can do every day or every week or any anytime you need to to be in a in a repeated pattern the the pattern ones that when you need to make especially the finite works for for example surveys from terrains from roads uh train movements and things like that and the ones triggered by one event for example uh surveillance when you have some a specified problem you take an alert and the drone goes to that place to make some normally some surveillance tasks if we go to the periodic part that is the most intensive we have a pipeline

**[9:36]** inspections before we need to check that along the pipeline there will not be a person construction houses or installations because because if the bible has some kind of problem that got civil civil consequences and that will be prevalent with the the law right and we have to do docs patient inspections uh tank inspections mostly in the inside part of tanks to check for corrosion and things like that chin inspections mostly inside but we can do it in the the top part of the chimney and high voltage tower inspections

**[10:37]** border inspection in this volume inspection is very special for us because because the the boiler are very big installation and we use a special kind of room to make this kind of infection uh I I will show you that this type of drone we use a inspection of a evolving uh [Music] it works and electrical inspections and this we have working right now in a special activity in drone that is a autonomous drone by inspection that is the the kind of work we are working right now um in the in the superior part of the this table we have the the most important plants where we are working with those kind of works with those with those tasks what we made was

**[11:40]** to buy some drones to to cover this works and to teach a person to to work to to drive the drones and make the the works today we have an actual flip of nine pilots the first strong you could see in the superior and left part is the special drone we use to make the inspection at the boilers is a special drone manufacturer for uh for a swiss company named flyability that is used to make inspection in confined spaces we have some drones big to make some special works and we have some smaller drones that make the 80 percent of the

**[12:41]** dairy work you see in the table before I will show you a small video that in some way resume the the whole type of activities we make today at the company with drones okay

**[14:35]** well so we have our drone fleet and had training pilots and the the list of uh tasks we need to do but uh all my problem today is sometimes when we do not you need to make some special or uh or some uh special tasks we don't have the pilot right now at the moment we do need it so uh what we are trying to do is to take a half to take out the part of the pilot especially for those with the operation that is you can make every day right and so in order to do that we began to study the possibility to make or develop a drone autonomous

**[15:35]** the features we we find we need will be that all flight will be inside property plant that is to avoid a regulation problem so if we we fly inside the the plant will not be problem with the regulation the real time and save video for historical data autonomous flight along a present path and waypoint I mean the the flight will be along a present path and repeated every time you need it and several waypoints that you will need you need to be observed will be recorded the mission should be able to be posted and resumed by operator request that is if the operator find some problem or something to to see with more attention compounds the the mission so what is happening and then resume it with a touch of a button

**[16:41]** the mission should be able to be executed manually by operator automatically by schedule that is well because sometimes the operator needs to attend another task and the the inspection should be down so he can do without a paying attention or shut putin in a schedule the drone battery should be recharged automatically this is very important because remember the operator maybe doesn't understand even how the drone is working the drone receptacle should be operated remotely that means to the top station and the drones will be able to take off and land in a safe way okay with those features requested as you probably know you need to at least three elements to to complete this this task one is the the drawing itself right you need a drone that is compatible

**[17:47]** that has an sdk or something open it in order to control it you need to have a dock station where the drone leaves and has to have some features for example store and protect the the drone to charge the battery to have the possibility to to the drone turn the run on and off open and close hatch is obviously a safe launch and landing and of course some software or service that that controls these features so this is the hardware we choose to to make the inspections this is the mavic 2 enterprise advanced and the main reason because we choose the advanced is because it has a rgb camera with a big zoom that would allow you us to to

**[18:53]** make the inspection without having to get so far into the installation uh has a thermal camera that is important for for us and the most important it has an ertakai module that allow us to make the flights safer with a precision sentimental precision in the flight these are the devastation we considered a first place we consider the the dock station is a very well done equipment a rugged but we know we but our bosses are a bit worried about the use of modified batteries because we lose the the warranty and the possible

**[19:57]** problems with the the modified battery itself so we are now is already are considering a dextronic equipment that has the the battery shop mechanisms that use the batteries and modified um we think that the the tests are good we are going for this solution this is the the test we make with a fly now application I will now show you the wall video because it's too extensive but you can see at the middle the waypoints we we put to inspect and we had our idea is to use the the system for two reasons one to make the inspection not just at this point uh but in another two another

**[20:59]** place two and when the drone is not used to make the inspection use it to make for surveillance purposes uh the idea is to make a perimeter service for for a in for purpose of um oh sorry and surveillance before they were and this is the path we are trying to to conduce the the drone as you can see uh the drones shall make the placement lateral displacement with the camera pointed to forward that is a function we don't have yet in FlytNow but the fly basically open it so you can make round around the

**[22:01]** the installation with the with the camera pointing always forward this is the example of a surveillance flight as you can see uh the the path is quite simple but we had to to fly about a 1.8 kilometers around the whole plants we we hope we in the near future we can finish with this project at this moment we are trying to decide which kind of substation we will use and making a survey of the all the inspection points we need in order to make the the flight plan so

**[23:02]** what this is the this is the our project and we are we expecting to to recover to to to finish the the next steps great great thank you martial thanks for that session that was really insightful and we got to understand how you are using drones and adopting autonomous drones during the box solutions for your power plants so let's move on to a few questions and answers so one question that the audience have is suppose if somebody is currently in uh oil in gas or power plants how can they start their drone programs as well as if they are already using drones what are the ways where they can get started with the drone in the box systems how how you did that and how they can approach this well actually it was uh our boss asked for for they need to

**[24:04]** the and they asked me one day is hey marcelo do you think that one can you can you be used to to fry along the the plant I mean I mean for them if you can fly a drone you can do everything so I think I really don't know but let me investigate right so I began to to to watch uh what kind of a system was in at the moment I'm talking about two years ago so there is not too many systems and they hold the all the system we we can got it was impressively expensive uh very expensive uh so we don't we cannot find any alternative then we can afford uh until we we got the your solution and

**[25:10]** and one generation of dog station that becomes cheaper and affordable right so we are working in that line got it right and in terms of the use cases you spoke about two things so can you tell me a bit more so there are two teams who could use it right one is in the morning you can have inspection team use it and then for security you can have a security team in the night doing the patrol how do you see that coming up is it something which the teams are asking or if you share some more thoughts on that I think that this idea because probably you need to make the the surveillance flight at night or at the morning right so we don't need the we don't see the needed of have two drones to make a very very similar task right uh even more if you consider that the task

**[26:13]** for inspection are scheduled so you know when you will need the drone both right so I think that is perfectly possible mostly if you look at the time without drones or without the box and with the droney balls what is the difference what kind of pain points is it solving the main problem is we don't need the pilot to be available especially at the surveillance task before because more probably when you need it it will be at night and the pilot will be at his house so if you need to use it even the pilot called from your from his house to fly the drone if we wish so is it's uh the the main solution we have is the the pilot the other one could be um

**[27:13]** the the practicity to have the drone ready from the operation room at every time if you need some you need to see something in particular and don't have the inspector right at that moment you can go with the drone record the the the this place where the problem is and let the the information to the inspector to see later right absolutely that that's great I'll so let me check if you have questions uh yeah I think we are up on the time as well as questions uh but ins thank you for joining the session if you have more questions you can of course visit and connect with marcelo uh marcel is also available master where they can reach out to you if they they want to reach out to you uh could you drop in your uh contacts or a linkedin profile uh over here in the chat so people can connect with you if

**[28:18]** they want to learn more about how you are doing it and they if they wish to learn more uh with this we would like to close this session about so if you have any final thoughts uh not except that this is quite hard to be to be uh the first to to make this kind of technology I I think everybody who is trying to do this notice so we we saw that every month uh pass we have more alternatives and better alternatives and that will be become very really really big so I I'm very very happy with that sounds good surely more exciting times ahead marcelo for the inspection industry and how we can leverage autonomous drones uh let me wrap this but thank you to you for taking out time today and sharing valuable insights with

**[29:18]** everybody and uh we would like to now close the sessions more exciting sessions are planned after this so please feel free to visit the reception of the session tab at any time to learn more about the upcoming session and continue enjoying the rest of the next chat thank you everybody thank you you