# Optimizing Utility Asset Inspection Process via Automated Drones - Event: NestGen ’24 - Published: April 16, 2024 - Length: 30:06 - Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/i2wA8WnZI3Q/ > 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 Discover the evolution of utility inspections with drone technology, emphasizing efficiency, safety, and cost-effectiveness. Join Gresco UAS Technology Solutions as they showcase innovative automated drone inspections, revolutionizing utility asset management. Learn how drones streamline operations, enhance reliability, and ensure safety standards, all while reducing costs. With insights from industry experts Jim Baker and Nathan Hayes, explore the benefits of transitioning from traditional methods to cutting-edge drone solutions. Elevate your understanding of utility inspections and unlock the potential of drone technology in enhancing operational efficiency and safety standards. To know more, visit: ===== Subscribe to FlytBase YouTube - Follow Us On - LinkedIn - Facebook - Twitter - Instagram - ## Transcript **[0:20]** so in this session we'll be looking at advancements in utility inspections through drone technology the transition from traditional methods to Innovative automated drone inspections with that emphasize efficiency safety and cost Effectiveness the sleep and Technology offers a streamlined approach to utility Asset Management enhancing operational reliability and safety standards and who better than gresco team to talk about it gresco Technology Solutions established in 2013 as a part of gresco Utility Supply Incorporated specializes in uas and Telecom services and equipment Bas in foret Georgia with seven locations across theth Southeast GTS offers comprehensive unmanned uh aircraft system Solutions in US and Canada leveraging gresco 60e Legacy GTS provides latest drone technology backed by gresco utility supplies extensive resources and knowledge and today we have with us Jim Baker and Nathan Hayes from the GCO team and I have also had a great opportunity to **[1:22]** work with them for a short period recently so great to have you Jim and Nathan um so let's have a quick round of instuctions before we begin um so Jim Baker is the southeast account manager at gresco uas uh where he Pilots his role with same expertise in zest he once did with drones in law enforcement after three decades of serving and protecting including decade at the helm of 32 aircraft 30 drone Pilots operations unit Jim took his challenge to gresco about a year ago his tool back toolbox is packed with skills and um you know in drone inspections uh operations policym and rescue machines as well now he's also you know navigating complex Skies of BB loss uh when he's not charting new territories in uh drone Tech Jim is the family co-pilot navigating life with uh Jamie and his co- captain of 29 years and their crew Jimmy and Jordan who are studying at **[2:27]** University of Florida along on with Jim as I said we have Nathan Hayes Nathan as gresco us support specialist and products uh support operations and product specialist I'm sorry has been an instrumental part of the team since 2017 with seven years of experience in the suas industry Nathan exemplifies an exceptional understanding of the product line and provides an invaluable support to customers his meticulous attention to detail and guidance through Dynamic realm of ever evolving drone technology is is an exceptional service to their customers and his Forward Thinking approach has been instrumental in advancing uh the mission and transform the uas market now I would like to briefly address the audience with a couple of housekeeping rules um you know please send us the questions uh be C be extremely uh you know uh free and curious just put out your questions in the Q&A Tab and Jim and Nathan will take it up towards the end of the session and and along with **[3:30]** that the session will be recorded and will be available on flight based TV along with uh social media platforms um and uh gresco also has a booth in the Expo section so do check it out you can visit the booth and also get an opportunity to interact with the GCO team now uh goes without saying U you will learn some invaluable insights from today's session uh just go to the LinkedIn and use the hashtag NES gen and uh there's a surprise for you the top three posts will win a NES gen hamper so just go to LinkedIn and use the hashtag nesg uh last but not the least I would like to thank our sponsors for their unwavering support throughout this event uh title sponsor DJI Enterprise and our goal sponsor sunflower Labs over to you Jim I'll just quickly stop sharing my screen and pull up the presentation great well thank you very much for having us here today um over the **[4:32]** next 15 minutes or so we're going to uh you know go down this road and we're going to talk a little bit about where we're at um we actually where we've been where we're at and where we're going with all this um so it's going to be a uh you know high level overview um but we're going to see the gamut and uh see if we can talk a little bit about you know all the advantages to to to try to reach our goal because the goal is where we need to be um but but why is it so important and uh you know and explain the need to get there so the uh the first um the first slide is in reference to traditional inspections so in the utility space where did we start with with all this trying to evaluate our equipment and and try to to take care of it maintain it so first thing we had was the oldfashioned line crawling um in the line you know Old Line crawling days literally they would crawl along the power lines to inspect it to make sure there were no phrase make sure there was no damage um anything like that uh of course then there was groundbased inspections uh groundbased inspections simply use you know telescopes binoculars cameras any type **[5:33]** of Optics and you know when they were lucky in the old days sometimes it was just about just your you know your vision and uh so obviously from the ground trying to look up um can be very challenging um you know you're only seeing one angle you're not seeing anything from the top um and and hard to see from the sides but you're only seeing the underside of of the apparatus um then we got into bucket trucks and uh you know bucket trucks helped improve the angles but uh it then you start getting into additional crew members uh for these inspections because it takes ground crew with the bucket trucks um you know of course there's a lot of safety uh concerns with bucket trucks we'll talk about that here in a few minutes I've spent some time in a bucket truck and had some scary times in a bucket truck so we'll talk about that in a minute um and you know with with using a bucket truck apparatus there's downtime um there there's times you know between between relocating the apparatus um and being able to inspect there's a lot of downtime so we want to want to prevent downtime that's that's one of the the goals here um and then there's manually climbing poles I Mar when I was a kid seeing uh the wooden spikes and all the power **[6:36]** poles um you know all over the neighborhood and uh it wasn't very very common to to look out and see a lineman or or you know someone in the power industry uh climbing up those spikes and those little wood poles um but you know these these methods um while they were effective they were slow very slow uh you know it increased the uh the downtime uh in the power when they haded you know de energize things like that um and of course Manpower you know Manpower is certainly uh expensive uh and uh sometimes there a shortage of it you just can't get enough and can't get enough people to do it so Manpower is is uh definitely a problem um in slide two we're g to talk a little bit about the uh the challenges and and how to prevent the uh the power outages um so and we already mentioned it but the increased downtime um you know when when the power goes down people aren't happy uh we're definely relying on electricity around the world and that's also dollars though um you know power companies utility companies in general whether it's the Telecommunications utility **[7:40]** whether it's water whether it's electric whatever the case may be when the electrons aren't flowing or the water's not flowing or the you know the the the light's not flowing through the the fiber um they're not they're not generating revenue and we're all in a business where we have to generate Revenue so we need to make sure that we decrease that downtime as much as possible a lot of that is is by having great proactive maintenance um and then cost you know as much as as you know we try to give the best value to our customers um we have to be able to cover our costs we have to to try to reduce costs where we can we have to be good stewards of our customers money um we have to provide them the best product at the most reasonable price and uh so by being able to reduce Personnel reduce equipment um and reducing resources it takes to do these maintenance missions um were able to pass those those cost savings on to the customers um service reliability and reputation so that is huge in in all Industries and in really all business um you know when when you can't **[8:42]** provide your service and people start getting frustrated with you um you know your reputation goes down and uh we never want that uh you know we've all had had problems with different utility uh utilities that when you're in a group of people talking don't you don't always hear good things about some utilities and we want to change that um we always want to make sure that we're we're treating our customers as best as possible and giving them the best product uh possible um climbing a pole you know climbing poles is is a challenge depending where you're at what you're doing um I couldn't imagine climbing a pole up north in the middle of the winter uh you know I'm of course I'm a Florida boy so so it's it's always nice and warm in Florida um but uh you know just the hazards of climbing poles in general uh let alone you know at least in a in a bucket truck you're usually insulated you're not insulated on a pole um you know in different weather conditions uh certainly not not the best thing to to do um and there's always a risk of shock you know um being shocked um you know it's not like if you're at your house and you you grab the plug wrong when you're pulling it out of the house you get a little shock when you're up **[9:44]** on that pole with uh you know hundreds of amps instead of that that 15 amp circuit um you know things can go really bad really quick um so that is certainly a danger area in in in the industry um bucket trucks um you know bucket trucks themselves can be can be very dangerous um I spent a lot of time in a bucket truck in my past career and uh just being on the side of the road with traffic coming at you and and I actually had someone take out some cones headed to the truck one day didn't hit the truck thank goodness um but uh standing up there you know in that bucket looking down and seeing those cones go flying in that car um was a hering experience and uh I would hate yeah good yeah with bucket trucks like you were talking about so like how did you feel like it would be like even though all the safety precautions out there what like you still had some concerns right like oh absolutely you know we had cones in the road we had flashers and markers and it still happens you know the the uh you know we've all seen the videos on YouTube where where people you know um **[10:48]** sometimes people don't drive the best and or make just make mistakes we're all human you know um and so bad things happen and so you know getting the the man out of the road uh the person out of the road um is certainly a benefit whenever we can and the uas industry can certainly help with that um next slide talking a little bit I'm okay go yep okay so for the the traditional method um of of drones so we we've now jumped from our our terrestrial you know groundbased uh inspections whether it's truck or climbing or whatever but back in around really around 2016 2017 with part 107 jumping in um that's when drones really first started being prevalent in our industry before then there was some drone usage um but but it wasn't that common um and after 107 kicked in especially after a year or two when we started figuring it out and figuring out the safety precautions and management systems and everything like that we started getting a lot more more prevalence **[11:50]** um but there was also challenges with that as well so yes sure you know right off the bat we we started getting these great views from up high you know we started seeing tops of poll that we hadn't seen before from the ground um you know without having to be in the truck um but then we started having challenges with data management so what do you do with this data um quick little you know story as I was I was part of the the recovery effort after Hurricane Irma hit Florida in 2017 I can tell you to this day there is a hard drive with over a terabyte of data that has probably never been looked at because nobody knew what to do with it you know we went out and we were shooting 4K video and you know just these massive files they couldn't be emailed that couldn't be transferred they're on this hard drive what happens um and so we've learned a lot since then how to manage that data what data is necessary and what data isn't necessary and what's best for for the operation um you know and then once you start working with that data what happens at that point so now you've got more um complications one if the if the right type of **[12:52]** data wasn't wasn't uh uh archived then there's a lot of challenges on the an analyzing side of it to try to to extrapolate the data needed or they just don't have the data they need um and of course then we start talking about having to hire third party people third party companies um so while you've saved Manpower on one side increased safety on one side it's very easy to now increase Manpower on another side so kind of more shifting than replacing um so again we want we want to save costs that's the end goal here um and getting to that that autonomy is where we we truly start saving the cost um so let's talk a little bit about about the actual automated drone inspections the next slide um you know we're finally approaching area of fully automated drone inspections um although there's still some some challenges some big challenges um but the benefits of the automated drone inspection um you know are are huge but the key is to be fully automated not just automating part of it we have we've had partial automation for a long time it's that that uh you know full **[13:54]** automation is where we really start getting getting the benefit um you know the uh um the thought of of collecting it without the pilot so you know we need to be able to to set these boxes up set these drones up and hit a button or just put it on a schedule and that drone automatically collects it without that visual Observer and without that pilot we need to get those people to doing other jobs you know other things that are very important in the industry they can still be doing those while while the automation is taken care of it um the uh you know then the key is to get it to the cloud so so getting it to the cloud is getting it to where it can be analyzed and where it can be be worked um and that can be done through a lot of different uh challenges you know during the flight we can use cellular networks after the flight we can use whether it's cellular get back into a terrestrial base um starlink is is coming starlink is definitely going to be our friend in this automation industry because in areas where we don't have that connectivity um that the that technology um especially where it's going now **[14:57]** it's good now but if you look at the forecast to what starling's going to do it's going to become exponentially better very very quickly um so we need to to to kind of shift our our mindset away from traditional Silo databases into these Cloud P platforms that can again autonomously upload autonomously uh you know evaluate the data and autonomously generate reports to where we can see where the data is at or or see the results of the of the inspection um and that reports side of it is is where really start seeing the benefits of this this automation um where it can be autogenerated as well um let's talk a little bit on next slide about the benefits of drone inspections um there of course there are many immediate benefits of drone inspection um again go back to kind of that that first thought process we had of minimizing downtime um you know reduce the number of outages again that's money um that's that's you know not serving our customers the best that we can when we're when we're down um you know so that increases higher reliability better reputation **[15:59]** the things that we've already talked about and uh so you know for the residential customers customers commercial space um that's of course what we need to where we need to be um you know and we're also looking at we want to reduce all the utilities or I'm sorry the um reduce the onm cost for the utility um you know utilizing the U overhead and passing the increases onto their their customers um and uh the um maintain Regulatory Compliance is going to be a a huge uh part of this as well uh the regulation side is going to be one of our our biggest challenges um because industry a lot of time outpaces The Regulators um and uh so we see it now we're going to continue to see it in the future um it's getting better of course but we still still definitely have those those challenges um and of course safety it all comes down to you know safety in the end um so endend Solutions let's talk a little bit about endend Solutions on the the next slide um **[17:00]** the goal is to have an endend solution uh in regards to automated inspection requires entire process to be automated we've got been touching on this but from the information that's being uh requested all the way through the report that's being generated um it all starts with requesting the proper information also if you go back to my story with the um you know after the the hurricane we didn't know what to what to take we didn't know what was needed you know in hindsight now you know in in our rearview mirror we know that five images of a a disaster area or or something that has been destroyed in the disaster is really all that's needed one nater shot in four obliques and that usually gives all the information needed to those that are evaluating it for sto you know Storm Restoration efforts um you know emergency mitigations those type of things so knowing what what to do is is and what to ask for is huge because no one told us what what they needed after that storm so we just assume they wanted the best quality video they could get and that's really not uh not what they wanted or not what they needed um when the assets remotely being inspected uh data is being collected of course **[18:03]** data is collected in a central resource and then uploaded as a digital twin um inspection AI algorithm uh in the base software so um you hear This this term a lot digital twin and these digital twins aren't just for the the um Disaster Recovery or after bad things happen the digital twins are very important before the bad things happen um so you know exactly what you've got because a lot of these these structures and the utility they're not brand new they've been there for a while um and the original plans may not be around the original people that that put these things in that had that that uh you know institutional knowledge of them they're not there anymore so by archiving it you can very quickly reference back to it and see exactly what was there exactly what's damaged and exactly what's going to be needed to repair it as fast as possible to get everything back running as fast as possible um it's important that the the data is is then generated into reports that can be shared shared with all stakeholders um and that's that's very important as well is you know when you start siloing the data and the right people don't see it **[19:06]** because they don't have access to it or the report hasn't been generated and passed along then what use is it and uh we have a tendency to Silo our data and Silo our information uh to where it starts um you know getting very difficult to to attain um through whether it's through it networks that they are worried about security um whether it's not knowing who needs it um that that is a really um important uh part of of this um all right slide seven access to data um data management and access is of course challenging uh as well um collecting the data may be easy having having access to the data in one reposit repository for all stakeholders uh to access can be a challenge in itself itself we've kind of talked about that already um you know if if a worker in the field doesn't have access to the data being collected and analyzed for for the particular asset then really how useful is it uh you know it's it's that's that's obviously a challenge um so we as an industry we have to empower our Personnel to have access to this data um we have to figure out how we can you know **[20:10]** design those it networks to allow safely allow those who need the the data uh to get it um and of course the goals are to to you know make all these jobs perform better improve the health health of our assets uh speed up emergency response maintain Regulatory Compliance um and uh you know data should not be on hand should not just be in the hands of of the data collectors the data um you know generators but also those those who need it um I know we're getting short on time here a little bit I've been talking a lot so last one return on investment um you know the the return on investment is huge first of all safety um you know kind of kind of hit that pretty hard in this presentation but um anything we can do to make people safer in the long run is better um and sometimes the the you know the Optics we can use and the angles we can get um at the same time keeping people safer may even be better um you know taking the human element out of it sometimes is a good thing um kind like self-driving cars they still have problems but overall it's better you know so kind **[21:14]** of the same thing um asset health of course that's that's another one we need to take failures in advance um and and maintain the systems and and make sure that we're catching things before they happen very recently I was shown a photo from a transmission system where there was a shackle that they found that was almost ready to break um and they were able to fix it before the breakage in a controlled manner with with very little downtime imagine in a in a in a transmission system with 500 KV that all sudden the shackle breaks and it was close and then now you've you've crossed phases you've you've tripped fuses and switches and now you're down for a long time um and that's that's never a good thing um efficient productivity you know efficiency is always a thing whenever we can we can you know capitalize on efficiency and and make things you know move smoother and better you know it it comes back to what I said originally we have to be good stewards of our customers money they're investing money to to to to buy our product um and we need to make sure we give them the best product uh possible um compliance uh you know data **[22:16]** collected during inspections creates a database for auditing purposes compliance is a huge return uh on investment uh Environmental Compliance so there's there's a lot of things in the environment that this helps as well you know putting a drone up less you know less fuel in helicopters less fuel in in bucket trucks you know longer um longer you know battery time in the year is is less you know Carbon Emissions on on the ground so you know it's it's always a good thing whenever we can uh help the environment as well um and then planned responses you know robots on site allow better data collection leading to to situational awareness uh prior to to arriving on site so when we can have these automated systems that can tell us what's there you know as people are going to fix it we've already collected the data with these automated systems um we've already seen exactly uh you know where we're at and what's happened so um that's the last slide so um and this is quick I know is a is a huge overview uh I went fast I apologized but I had to you know cram it in my **[23:18]** timer was clicking in front of me so yeah I think Jim uh you covered a lot of you know things that you know usually people who are in utility they will think about will take something out of this uh we'll just quickly jump onto questions because uh we running short of time right now so let me just read out a few questions um all right uh someone is asking what are some Regulatory Compliance benefits um that is one question Jim if you can if you like take that up the Regulatory Compliance benefits was the question um uh with that you know pre preventing safety uh incidents um frequent automated inspections can ensure that employees safety and prevent uh dangerous incidence from occurring um the maintenance side of this is is huge so we have the Regulatory Compliance um regulatory authorizations and compliance um actually two different things but kind of kind of connected um you know we we can comply with the needs of of what the services we have to to deliver **[24:23]** um and autom automating the process with the compliance on the regulatory side assist that as well of course all right um the next question is what is the average timeline for creating an automated inspection [Music] program wow um that's that's a moving Target uh because there's there's so many uh variables in there um you know we could we it could be a few short months up to a year and a half to two years um because the the regulatory side of this getting the approval to run these a automous systems um all happens through the FAA in the United States um the FAA and the regulatory body so that's probably the biggest challenge um you know our technology our industry is certainly outpacing uh the regulatory side just the speed of government and I'm sure it's that way in every country um but the speed of government uh making sure that that industry stays within their Lane because got you got a lane you can't can't go too far outside your lanes um and and you know we certainly need to make sure that uh you know everything is complied with very well **[25:26]** but that does slow things down at times s but it's not a bad thing in the endend it's a good thing we just we we get anxious when we see the technology we want to implement it right away right all right um there's another question um EOS is asking I am wondering how an automated system react to or manage potential loss of control induced by high voltage interferences of a power station without any human monitoring so we we've had very good luck um you know we've been flying these aircraft around electrical subst stations for years now and it is extremely rare that we see any problems whatsoever um uh you know there are times when if they get really really close um almost touching sure there's there's problems um but the the early drones in our industry definitely had a lot more interference and had a lot more issues with magnetic fields and you know RF signals and things like that but in today's drones we just don't see it um I haven't seen any any problems around cell towers or electrical Towers or electrical substations in many many years so so it's **[26:28]** really almost not not an issue anymore oh all right um Robert Ford is asking how do you manage scale I'm working in an area of uh 125,000 miles of lines a million poles and tars and an annual requirement of 200,000 Po and to inspection ranging from 13 to 400 images wow that's a lot that's that's a whole lot of automated boxes and stuff um so a lot of things you know we have to be worked into that scale one is how much distance do you have from the box to the range of the aircraft you know we're still dealing with RF signals right now you know there's technology where we may be switching over to Cellular technology for these but right now we're still on RF um so there's limiteds uh to the RF and and there's no no set number on that because there's a lot of factors in that whether you've got trees in the area um other things producing RF signals that while they may not directly you know interfere with the aircraft they certainly can reduce the range you're getting out of the aircraft **[27:30]** um so you've got those those to contend with as range issues so now that that in that scale thought process how many boxes do you need um because now depending on factors you may be getting the boxers closer and closer so that's one aspect of it second aspect is once you complete a mission then the the aircraft has to come back and recharge uh most of the current technology is it comes back recharges in the box so now you're down for 45 minutes is you know depending on the system um between flights so what happens in that other during that 45 minutes do you have a second box with another aircraft that's out at that same time so now you got two or three boxes at a single location to keep that that going um so you had to figure that into scale is it better to have multiple boxes or do you put more boxes spread out and and run fewer missions so scale can be very difficult um just takes a lot of analyzing and really analyzing the needs how off needing the inspections is is a huge factor in that does that need to be that you know area need to be inspected once a day once a week once a month um and so there's no good answer for that other **[28:31]** than you really just got to look at that at your needs and start looking at the performance of the box to to work in the scale and a big big you know depending on how big the scale is you know sometimes you know automated drones may not be the perfect solution at this point you know maybe man aircraft is still a better solution um we're certainly working to where the auto automated um box system is going to be the solution um but there are certainly scales where there are are limits to the physics you know that we have right now right thank you Jim I think that was a fairly elaborate answer I hope Robert your question was answered well uh yeah all right I think uh that's it from the Q&A side um if you would like to interact with Jim I think you can feel free to reach out to him over his email and connect with him over LinkedIn we also have nesen Community uh which we are releasing so you can join the wait list I've shared a link in the chat nesen community is a community of experts enthusiasts everyone in the autonomy space **[29:32]** coming together as we did today in N gen but for for for a long-term uh and a more uh inclusive uh manner right with the community so please do join the community you can check it out and thanks a lot Jim and Nathan for joining us today it was a really great session and I think a lot of people will go go today with some great insights on how to perform utility EXP inspections with uh docks and drones great thanks everybody take care all right thanks have a good day