Category Archives: Aerial/UAS
The Next Big Thing
A string of high-profile bridge failures in recent years has underscored the importance of innovating the way we inspect and assess the condition of our vital civil infrastructure. Can the use of AI help prevent bridge collapses in the future? This award-winning engineer thinks so. The period spanning 1992 to 2014 could just be the...
AI in the Sky
Will artificial intelligence solve the beyond visual line of sight problem for uncrewed aerial vehicles? For more than a decade now we have been moving more and more processes and tasks from crewed aviation to drones in a variety of industries, but the promise of widespread massive deployment of these electrically powered wonders is still...
A Decade of Uncrewed Photogrammetry
Some might have had a peek at photogrammetry drones before 2013, but for me 2023 marks a decade since I first laid eyes on an uncrewed aircraft that “claimed” to do what I had been doing for years in bigger, more stable airplanes in the joyful company of pilots, copilots, camera operators, and navigators. In...
Autonomous Drone Mapping
How interior spaces like mines are being scanned and imaged by a drone that works without a pilot or connectivity. There is a scene in the Ridley Scott-directed 2012 sci-fi thriller “Prometheus” where a deep space exploration crew lands on a planet and discovers an underground labyrinth. They lob a levitating orb down a tunnel,...
The Advantages of “Built Here”
There are reasons other than policy and security to consider domestically produced drones. Yes, when it comes to the drone market there is an almost “default” choice. Having established dominance, it further benefits from price by volume. And then they can invest more in R&D from the increased profits—if they choose to and do not...
Tackling the Aerial-to-CAD Bottleneck
Aerial capture is getting easier and faster, but the subsequent step of CAD linework generation is a bottleneck—especially given the present shortage of qualified drafters. AI is stepping in to help. In 2017, the co-founders of what would become AirWorks Solutions Inc. first met and began discussing ideas for a new geospatial venture. Both had...
