The sky's the limit when it comes to using drones in civil engineering, with self-repairing cities closer to becoming a reality.
The University of Leeds was recently awarded almost AUD $9 million to launch a study into the use of robots, including drones, in infrastructure maintenance.
The project, titled Balancing the impact of city infrastructure engineering on natural systems using robots, will aim to develop small robots to identify problems with utility pipes, street lights and roads and fix them with minimal environmental impact and disruption to the public.
Working with Leeds City Council and the UK Collaboration for Research in Infrastructure and Cities, the researchers will initially develop new robot designs and technologies in three areas:
• Perch and Repair – research to develop drones that can perch, like birds, on structures at height and perform repair tasks, such as repairing street lights
• Perceive and Patch - research to develop drones able to autonomously inspect, diagnose, repair and prevent potholes in roads
• Fire and forget – research to develop robots which will operate indefinitely within live utility pipes performing inspection, repair, metering and reporting tasks
In a statement, project leader Professor Phil Purnell from the university’s School of Civil Engineering, said his vision was to make Leeds the first city in the world to have zero disruption from street works.
“We can support infrastructure which can be entirely maintained by robots and make the disruption caused by the constant digging up the road in our cities a thing of the past,” Purnell says.
Closer to home, local governments around Australia and New Zealand are already using drones to complete tasks that would prove more difficult and sometimes dangerous using traditional approaches.
Waitaki District Council began using drones in October to photograph coastal erosion alongside the roads on the east coast of Oamaru.
Drones are also being put to work at Kempsey Shire Council.
Manager Engineering Works Tony Green says the council used UAVs in 2014 to survey a landfill site, and were so impressed they also had aerial photographs taken of Kempsey’s main street.
“We initially trialled it to do a survey of our landfill site to determine the contours and compare to a ground survey,” Green explains.
“In theory the UAV survey gives a far better representation of the ground surface. There is a requirement from EPA to survey landfills every six months and calculate the change in volume and the UAV survey should give a more accurate result.”
Green says the technology made both tasks easier.
“Ground survey of the landfill is more time consuming and it would be impractical to get the same level of detail,” he says. “Aerial photos could only be done by helicopter.”
However, drones do have limitations, Green says.
“Weather conditions can limit operations and there are Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) restrictions about flying over populated areas,” Green says.
“We have some concerns about accuracy. We have had discrepancies at the landfill site between the ground survey calculation and the UAV calculation. While some variation is inevitable, the discrepancies seem excessive. We are working with the contractor to verify the accuracy.”